London to Brighton

I’d been avoiding it for years, but knew my excuses would have sounded increasingly feeble even to a man without the coruscating intellect of my godfather. I really did have to do it. I had to take part in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.

I was in awe of this man, as would you have been if he’d let you drive his brand new Porsche 928 down a private road as fast as you could make it go when you were just 15 years old. Yes, really. But he also quite unintentionally made me feel completely inadequate. Whereas I had had it all – the posh schooling and enough family contacts that only a complete idiot could have failed to carve out some kind of career in The City (me again) – he was a Valleys boy, pure Welsh mining stock who’d risen to become the chairman of a large public company.

And where I’d finally lied and lucked my way into a career in a form of journalism so unimportant it still feels fraudulent to so describe it, he was a man who got where he did through guts, determination, sweat and integrity.