Before becoming a journalist, he was a casual laborer, a factory worker, a truck driver a restaurant cashier. a civil servant and an assistant private secretary to a government minister. He left government service in 1978 to hitchhike around the world and on returning to the U.K. in 1978, joined a local newspaper as a trainee reporter• Before becoming a journalist, he was a casual laborer, a factory worker, a truck driver, a restaurant cashier, a civil servant, and an assistant private secretary to a government minister. He left government service in1978 to hitchhike around the world, and on returning to the U.K. in 1978, joined a local newspaper as a trainee reporter