Emma Lee-Potter

I’ve been an admirer of Liz Jones’s column in the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine for years. She’s outspoken and controversial – and SO readable. As I wrote in my blog back in 2011: “I turn to her page before anything else. I occasionally get fed up with accounts of her huge menagerie of animals but even so, she writes so well and with such disarming frankness that her diary ...keep reading

It was the sort of mistake we all dread making. A diner at a Manchester restaurant was so impressed by the delicious bottle of red that he immediately ordered the same again. Only then did the waitress realise that she had accidentally served the most expensive bottle on the wine list – a £4,500 Chateau Le Pin Pomerol 2001. Fortunately her boss took it remarkably well. “She’s a great employee ...keep reading

Martha Gellhorn is an inspired subject for a novel. One of the most legendary war correspondents of the 20th century, she reported on every major conflict during that time, from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam. At 81, an age when most people are ready to put their feet up, she covered the US invasion of Panama. I’ve always been fascinated by the intrepid Gellhorn’s story – and by her ...keep reading

This is an exciting week for me because my first non-fiction book, Interviewing for Journalists, is out. It’s aimed at journalism students and trainees but journalists of all ages and anyone who has to conduct interviews will be interested in it. My husband runs a technology business and he’s picked up loads of tips from the book about how to interview customers, suppliers and prospective employees. He now refers to ...keep reading

Interviewing for Journalists focuses on the central journalistic skill of how to ask the right questions in the right way. It is a practical and concise guide for all print and online journalists – professionals, students and trainees – who write news stories and features for newspapers, magazines and online publications. In the age of digital journalism, where computer-based research is easily available, this new edition seeks to emphasise the value ...keep reading

What a brilliant way to start the festive season. Lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street with some of my best pals from the old Evening Standard days, followed by a drink or two at one of our favourite haunts, the Punch Tavern. As the drinks flowed, the years rolled away and the stories got wilder. We reminisced about the days when mobile phones were the size of bricks, ...keep reading

I took the old-fashioned route to becoming a journalist. These days a lot of young people take degrees in journalism or, I can hear you groaning, media studies. But I learned the job the hard way on a local weekly newspaper in a sleepy market town in Devon. I wrote about flower shows, parish council meetings, golden weddings and village fetes. It wasn’t exactly cutting edge stuff but it taught ...keep reading

The last time I worked in an office Prince Charles was still married to Princess Diana (just), mobile phones were the size of bricks and cappuccinos were unheard of outside Italy. In those days journalists started their careers in the provinces, honing their skills on local papers, learning 100wpm shorthand and bashing out stories on tinny typewriters. After a couple of years loads of us hotfooted it to London, clutching our prized ...keep reading

Rooting through my old files I’ve just found a piece about journalism that I wrote as a young reporter. I can’t for the life of me remember who it was for but here, completely unedited and slightly dated, is an account of my route to Fleet Street. Don’t even contemplate going into journalism if you are highly-strung, sensitive to the slightest criticism or expect to be on the 6.03 train ...keep reading

Sarah Montague’s alarm goes off at the unearthly time of 3.25am on working days. Why? Because she’s one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme, Today. She arrives at the studio at 4am, spends the next two hours preparing for the show and the programme starts at 6am on the dot. The radio journalist is just one of 3.5 million people in the UK who are ...keep reading