On the plus side, I got some free toilet rolls, and ended up with a short news piece in Convenience Store – the fortnightly for neighbourhood retailers.

Bevis O’Neill was rake-thin, with big kind eyes and a penchant for waistcoats. Never far removed from a pint of lager and a packet of fags...

It was early 1988 and for the first time in my life, I was sitting in a proper restaurant. Furthermore, I was in a right old panic.

"Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose."

The same seven structures are used for everything from a B2B blog to a Hollywood movie

The pro-slavery, anti-Catholic artist grabbed all the glory for himself

How can the great storytellers help us to write better content in the workplace – whether it's reports, web content, social media etc.

The old boy tells me I'm not pulling my weight so he's made me write a blog. Brilliant.

Issue 11 of IQ has arrived on my desk, again offering rich pickings for curious minds. Highlights include physicist Jim Al-Khalili and...

Even more entertaining was the story behind Fitba, featuring Hibs casuals, pots of stovies, Rod Stewart, and a chain-smoking Scotty dog.

live in desperate poverty with no access to health care or primary education? That'll be down to President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago.

When each story was finished, I slammed a carbon copy through the metal spike on my desk. Health & safety hadn't really caught on in 1988.