How not to become a motoring journalist: Part one

All I knew was the last refuge of the public school drop-out to offer even the thinnest veil of respectability lay in the City of London. It was that, or estate agency. So I got a job at a firm of stockbrokers and was of course promptly discovered to be poor value even at just £4750 per year. I can remember doing a deal so bad my boss had to ring the market maker and say, ‘Fred, we’ve been friends for 30 years. If that means anything to you at all, you will cancel that trade.’ And that was the end of that.

Next came commodity broking where I stayed a little longer and earned a little more, the end coming rather pleasantly in the form of the kindly managing director saying, ‘Andrew, I’m not firing you, but I think we can agree this line of business is not for you. Shall we say three weeks?’

So I got serious and decided I was just about pompous enough to become a barrister, and having inherited a bit of money from a recently deceased close relative, I decided to study law at Buckingham University where the sole entry qualification was the ability to pay the bill. Staggeringly and perhaps unprecedently, they turned me down. They’d literally rather not have had the money. But I found somewhere in West Kensington that would take me, actually passed the first year exams, but collapsed on day one of year two when presented with the Law of Property Act 1925 and told to learn it.

My next move was to go home to drink and smoke until the money ran out and then…who knew? Not me for sure.

Which is what I was doing when a friend of my brother spotted an advert in The Guardian for a road test assistant on Autocar magazine. He mentioned it to said brother, who mentioned it to me. And somewhere deep in the reptilian core of what remained of my smoke-addled, booze-fuelled brain, a light dimly flickered.

Given I had literally nothing to lose save my already long gone dignity, I rang the number. It was answered by a nice sounding Australian lady calling herself Gabby. This, I knew already from the magazine’s flannel panel, was Gabby Smith. She was the office administrator and I was actually speaking to someone who’s name was published in a car magazine every single week. The call was worth it for that.

I made up some lie about having been away and only just seen the advertisement and asked if the job was still available. It was, said Gabby, but only because they had been overwhelmed by applications and had not yet got around to going through them all. I think she said there had been 400.

Which is when I did the one thing that could remotely be categorised as smart in the entire process. I asked if there was anything I could do to make my application stand out. To which Gabby replied, ‘Yes, write something. For some reason the ad only asked for CVs, so we’re sitting on piles of them without an idea if any can actually write.’ It was the single most useful piece of advice I had, have or will ever be given.

What to write about? Well I’d had a dilapidated Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GTI as part of the obligatory City Slicker uniform back when I was earning some money, but that had been written off while parked outside my flat, so now I was driving my dad’s Renault 5 GT Turbo which I’d bought from him. Actually I’d done no such thing: he gave me the car on the understanding that as soon as I became a lawyer and was earning proper money I’d pay him back. It is possible I may have omitted to tell him I’d already not been going to law school for many months.

So that was the story: a comparison between the Golf and the Renault, charting the evolution of the fast hatchback along the way. Of course I’d never typed a word in my life, so I went and bought an ancient typewriter from a bloke in the Portobello Road and persevered with teaching myself this most essential of skills long enough to realise I didn’t know how to fit the ribbon. I then remembered my other brother had already started his own property company and was employing people, one of whom was bound to be a secretary with typing skills I could temporarily divert in my direction. She drove a hard bargain which I had to negotiate down to a tin of Huntley & Palmer biscuits, but my story was duly transcribed from pen to type and sent to Gabby.

In truth I expected never to hear from the magazine again but two days later a call came from someone with a familiar Australian accent. ‘Hi Andrew, thanks for sending in the story. Would you like to come in for a chat?’

I think it was only then I realised I’d been drowning. Until that point I’d been slipping so slowly beneath the waves, I didn’t recognise that pleasant drowsiness for what it was. But Autocar had thrown me a lifebelt, and though I’d have to swim like hell to reach it, swim I would because as the fog lifted from my mind, I suddenly saw not only a life, but one worth living.

As it turned out my interview was to take place at the Millbrook Proving Ground. I turned up in a suit and tie and once they’d stopped laughing, my inquisitors were to be then Road Test Editor Howard Lees and his deputy Neil McIntee who’d just driven a brand new E34 BMW 535i overnight from its launch in Munich. I could not have been more impressed. It saddens me to realise both are no longer with us: Howard died in a stunt plane accident only four years later before realising his dream of starting a magazine called ‘Fast & Dangerous’, while Neil slipped away recently.

They heard me out, listening to the carefully assembled web of lies I’d spun about my skills in car driving, assessment and writing. I then had a brief and not very fast driving test around the track to prove I wasn’t a complete moron and that was that. I was offered the job.

And this is where I should say ‘and the rest is history…’ but it wasn’t. It took not weeks but days for first Howard and then the rest of the senior editorial team to realise that not only was I nothing special behind the wheel, I even less impressive behind the typewriter. In short they wanted me out. It was the City all over again. It was obvious even to me that if getting my dream job had been hard, hanging onto it would be a task of an altogether different proportion. Of which I’ll bore you again soon.  

Read part two