What - if anything - do you remember from the night you won PPA Editor of the Year?

Not a lot… I paid for the champagne, which was usually the way it was at the BBC. And I think my Radio Times deputy, Sue Robinson, punched someone on the Top Gear table, because they felt their editor had been robbed. Oh, and about 4am, tired and emotional on my Kentish Town kitchen floor I noticed an envelope with a cheque taped to the back of the framed award, which was very welcome.

What was your favourite single front cover during your time as Editor and why?

I had two spells as editor, so too many to mention. But Falklands’ hero, Simon Weston, with his fire ravaged face, was humbling and one I’m really proud of. I was new and from The Times and wanted RT to be more newsy. And it was memorable, too, for the circulation director going bonkers – “This’ll kill us at the newsstand, Nick!” Then “Bianca by Bailey” – this was the strategy of photographing soap stars in a way they’d never be seen before, in this case getting EastEnders’ Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer) photographed by David Bailey. Finally, when the TV listings market was deregulated and we looked like being swamped by new listings’ magazines and newspaper supplements, there was the Lenny Henry Comic Relief cover with the coverline promise that we’d give half the cover price for very copy sold to Comic Relief. I ended up signing a cheque for £1m and giving it to Richard Curtis and Emma Freud.

Looking back as a PPA award-winning Editor, what advice would you now give yourself when you were starting out in our industry?

“Look after your integrity and your reputation looks after itself” was something I tried to live up to, until someone told me it was a saying of Alan Sugar’s which rather took the gloss off it! Could have been worse, I suppose. It could have been one of Donald Trump’s.