As a teenager I shared most people's distrust of British journalists. But then I took part in a BBC Scotland radio programme called Sunday Club in which school kids interviewed the newsmakers of the day. I had a lot of fun. I had a lot more fun than a lot of the other participants because I was invited back way more times than them. This wasn't because I was brilliant. It was because nearly all the others had been chosen by their schools. And they were the kind of people whom schools would choose to represent them. The senior staff at my high school would never in a million years picked me to represent the place on national radio. But I think my reluctance to kow-tow and generally sook-up gave me an edge when it came to quizzing the Great and the Good on a Sunday lunchtime. I had been incredibly lucky to side-step the usual selection process for the programme. But I have no doubt that the school's leadership believed there were other pupils who better deserved to have Sunday Club on their CV and would they happily have done everything it could to make that happen for their little favourites.