From bed bugs in Stockton to a naked delousing in the Central African Republic - yet another example that journalism isn't always what they show in the films.

A love letter to the Gram Library, the lost art of radio playlists and the exact moment I discovered that censorship only ever makes things worse. 

A true story about early starts, Local Radio, and professional commitment taken slightly too far.

A reporter’s guide to sponsored trips, accidental engagements, hostile borders — and why the success of every journey eventually comes down to the toilets.

How superglue, MiniDisc and a panicking reporter changed broadcasting — and why no journalist ever fully trusts technology.

We all have dream jobs don’t we? I’ve been lucky enough to have a career doing something that many people wanted to get into - but human nature being human nature - it was never enough for me. I always wanted to be a Rock God and for three minutes and nine seconds I made it. Altogether now: “AGADOO, DOO, DOO…..”

In the 1980s, you could ring the BBC library and ask for anything. One afternoon, they took me far too literally.

One of the responsibilities of being “the BBC” was to play the pips at the top of every hour on radio - a live time-check. The Greenwich Time Signal was something never to be messed with. But what happens when it all goes wrong?

One of the most reviled areas of journalism, Vox Pops can - occasionally - be brilliant ways of getting right to the heart of a story. Read my latest post to find out how one reporter worked out a way to record new Voxes every day without leaving the office…

Sneaky BBC tricks fail to thwart my plan to work in the land of dreams.

Desperate times, questionable methods. The good news: nobody was poisoned. The better news: it actually worked.

The three most important stories for Local Radio? The weather, the weather and…. the weather.

How a 1970s school sex education and a fake Russian defection taught me you should never over-egg a pudding.

… as I commit yet another screw-up and add to an airport’s Foreign Object Debris. Trust me, this is never a good thing.

After decades working for the BBC, nobody has ever known my face but quite a few have mistaken me for someone else. The lesson for any spies who want to go incognito? Just work in radio.

How do reporters cope in a world where they're not allowed to record anything said in court apart from by writing it down? As shorthand dies out, what chance is there of an accurate record of a trial?

The occupational hazard of a journalist is that they spend far too much time with people they’d rather not be with (and I don’t mean management).

The publishing industry, in danger of completely dying out, is racing to the bottom with an ever-increasing need to get people to click on stories to generate income. And every time we do it, a little bit of our souls die.

When you get an interview with one of your heroes it’s a finely balanced battle: you’ve been given just FOUR minutes to interview Jürgen Klopp BUT you’ve brought a Liverpool shirt with you and want him to sign it. What do you do? It’s a dilemma between the professional and the fanboy.

What's the best job and the worst in the world of broadcasting and which ones are the biggest non-jobs? This is my rundown of what everyone does in front of and behind the microphone.