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

I can safely say that 5 May 2004 was a memorable night, but not necessarily for all the right reasons. Our team – Building – also won business magazine of the year, for the third time in five years. Cue the inevitable celebrations. Alas, when I finally stumbled home at 5am, my wife announced that she was going into labour. At that particular moment, I wasn’t best able to assist as planned. And even when our daughter Sophie was finally born at St Thomas’s Hospital 12 hours later I was arguably still in worse shape than her mother.

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

My favourite cover was the consequence of my favourite story – a brilliant scoop by Giles Barrie, our deputy editor, who, in 1999, uncovered the outrageous cost of the new MPs offices opposite the Palace of Westminster. The numbers told the story and our art team produced a stunning graphic. The story went as viral as was possible in the pre-social media days, all over the nationals, and I spent much of the next week touring TV and radio studies.

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

You’ll never get rich, but you will be taken absurdly seriously by very senior people for someone with so little talent