IT all started in 1972, before my 16th birthday, with a dream. I had just finished school, with three O levels. I told my Dad that I just wanted to be on the radio and read the news on the BBC. It just seemed like the coolest thing in the world to do. He said: ‘Yes… we’ll get around to that nonsense after you have a trade!’. He showed me an advertisement in the paper for the GPO apprentice scheme – so I spent the next three years learning to plant telegraph poles and install telephones.