How not to become a motoring journalist: Part two

The reason I was so determined The Intercooler should have a Young Writer programme – where we could do all we could to help aspiring journalists find a way into this industry – is because hardly anyone ever lifted a finger for me.

On the contrary, having lucked and lied my way into a job at Autocar in 1988, I found both it and the industry within which it operated hard-nosed at best, hostile at worst. I remember going on my first car launch (the original Alfa Romeo 164) and the only person who deigned to speak to me was Tim Holmes, a former hack himself who’d crossed the carpet and was now in the company’s UK PR department. He went on to run Ford’s public affairs over here and only recently retired.