I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.

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I graduated in law from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.

I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics.

I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries, after which, surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.

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Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.

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But I am also an author of literary fiction: The Things We Learn When We’re Dead, Everyday Magic, Being Alert!, The Space Between Time and Love Potions and Other Calamities.

I’ve always been a writer, from primary school. I wrote my first “novel” in my early teens and, by the time I was 21, I had written three more. All were gibberish. But I then became a journalist and learned how to write lucidly. Writing is a trade, and you have to learn it…there are no short-cuts.

Writing is a deeply personal thing, but writing is in my veins, in my DNA. Simply, it’s what I do and I’m very good at it.