BEN WALKER, 29, deputy news editor, Regeneration & Renewal magazine
In an interview for a place on a journalism course in London in 2001 I was taken to task by the course leaders for the frequency of grammar mistakes in the mini lifestyle magazine I had launched with friends in Newcastle. After about 20 minutes of their fault-finding I got a touch peeved and decided — as I had obviously blown the chance of a place — that I’d give them a taste of their own medicine. I drew their letter offering me an interview from my pocket and duly read it out. “Apparently,” I said, “you are only 20 minutes FORM King’s Cross station.” They burst out laughing. Three days later a secretary called up and offered me a place. “They liked you,” she said, “and they wanted someone who could fight their corner — which you clearly could.”