Q&A


What made you become a journalist? At school, I graduated from making comics to setting up a music fanzine. But it wasn’t obvious to me that I would become a journalist until I got a job as a production assistant on The List magazine in Edinburgh. Sarah Hemming, the theatre editor, kept seeing me at first nights and encouraged me to write.


What other job might you have done? I have a degree in drama and wanted to get involved in some aspect of theatre but wasn’t sure what. I was lucky to find a job in which I could indulge my twin interests of writing and theatre.


When did you join the NUJ and why? I think it was when I went freelance in 1992. I’ve heard it said that many people join a union because they had a family history of trades unionism. My mum was in the National Union of Teachers, my dad was in NALGO and my uncle was an official in the Fire Brigades’ Union, so I grew up with the idea of workers’ solidarity.


Are many of your friends in the union? I’m secretary of Edinburgh Freelance Branch, so I’m friends with a lot of members because of that. Many of my fellow theatre critics are members too.


NUJ & me Mark Fisher is an arts writer


and the freelance rep for the NUJ’s national executive council


What’s been your best moment in your career? The night I saw Black Watch, the most successful production in the history of the National Theatre of Scotland, was also the night I had dinner with Kylie Minogue. That was some evening.


What is the worst place you’ve ever worked in? I once had a temp job sitting by a phone and, when it rang, had to write down the name and address of the caller who was responding to a job advert. It says a lot about unconscious bias that, even in my brief interactions, I formed an opinion about their suitability – and I didn’t even know what the job was.


And the best? Being freelance, I’m lucky to work with some great editors, in particular at The Guardian, The Scotsman and The List, all of whom make clear decisions and respond


quickly. Having a pitch rejected is not nearly as bad as getting no reply at all.


What advice would you give someone starting out? Younger journalists probably do this instinctively, but it’s about being flexible and thinking creatively. A journalist’s raw material – the ideas they research, the words they write, the pictures they take – may end up in a print publication, but today’s journalist should keep in mind the many other forms it might take, whether that be a Substack newsletter, an illustrated lecture, a walking tour, a podcast or a YouTube video.


Who is your biggest hero? I interviewed Andy Partridge, lead singer of XTC, when I was 16 and, after more than three decades as a journalist, I have yet to find a more inventive and entertaining interviewee.


And villain? Several obvious candidates at the moment, but we’re still dealing with the damage inflicted by Margaret Thatcher.


Which six people (alive or dead) would you invite to a dinner party? I imagine the conversation would flow between Bjork, Ken Campbell, Aretha Franklin, Stan Laurel, Robert Lepage and Ali Smith.


What was your earliest political thought? Almost certainly, “It’s not fair”.


What are your hopes for journalism over the next five years? That we find new ways to fund arts criticism and public interest journalism, both of which are vital to civic life and neither of which are easy to sustain on a commercial basis.


And fears? That we will no longer be able to distinguish between truth and lies, human and robot.


How would you like to be remembered? As someone who made a mean lasagna.


theJournalist | 13


DREW FARRELL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, ZUMA PRESS, INC. / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2001 MCT


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