John Sergeant ITN Political Editor

'Journalism? Don't do it'

John Sergeant, 57, is ITN's political editor for its news programmes on ITV. His previous post was chief political correspondent for the BBC, where he had worked as a reporter since 1970, covering stories in more than 25 countries.

Education and background

When I was doing PPE at Magdalen College, Oxford, I wrote sketches, so as a young man I was faced with a decision over whether I was going to go into comedy or go into journalism. I decided that I wanted to go into journalism so I got myself a job at Reuters as a trainee, but before the job had properly started I performed in Edinburgh with a student revue. Alan Bennett saw me one night and asked whether I wanted to be in his comedy show called On The Margin, which was before Beyond The Fringe.

I accepted Alan's offer instead of going to Reuters. The scripts were a real hoot, and even though he wasn't anything like the bigger figure he is now, he was still a remarkably interesting guy. But although he was very funny to work with, I also found it was quite a serious job. Top-level comedy has a way of being pretty grim like that; perfectly reasonable professionalism in a sense, but also not as much fun as it looks. There's not that much larking around and you end up having to work so hard behind the scenes to make it look good.

First steps

I decided that I should go back and be a journalist, but I couldn't go back to Reuters after turning them down. I got on to a sub-editors' course on the Liverpool Daily Post instead. I failed as a sub-editor. I was a fish out of water really. I remember finding difficulty writing a headline when Che Guevara died and the chief sub snatched the paper out of my hand and scrawled the headline he thought was suitable, which was "Dissident Killed". I thought that was very very silly and very inadequate. Because of that and other reasons I was prevented from being a sub-editor, which was good really. As the worst possible punishment I was made a reporter, as I have stayed ever since.

It gradually dawned on me that I was better at being a reporter. I was affected by Bernard Shrimsley, who became the editor of the Post at the end of my time, and he then went on to become editor of The Sun and editor of the News of the World. He encouraged my reporting and we did some very interesting things together in Liverpool.

Big break

In 1970 I applied to be a radio reporter for the BBC. My patron there was someone called Peter Woon, and he was an important figure for me. I went down to an interview at the BBC, and I had to prepare a three-minute piece based on a previous day's news, so I decided I would write a funny piece rather than a serious piece because I thought it would give me a better chance of impressing people.

The moment I arrived I was taken to a studio and a voice came over and asked me to read the piece in my own time. Afterwards I was asked to go up to the fifth floor and I walked into a boardroom with everyone sitting around formally, except for Peter Woon who had his feet on the table. He said that they thought the piece I did was suitable for a school magazine.

I looked him straight in the eye and said: "Yes, I thought it would go very well into a school magazine." He literally took his feet off the table and thought to himself, well, we've got someone to talk to here.

I gave as good as I got during the interview. He asked what I thought of The World This Weekend. The programme used to go for nearly an hour, and every Sunday there would be this feature that would be a sort of charity bit, and I said I didn't like it. "Why's that?'' he said. "You want people to cry, don't you?" I answered yes, but added that if you did it every week it debased the currency. He was very interested in that and the charity feature was removed soon after.

It turned out that they didn't have a vacant post and there was a period where I didn't know whether I was going to get the job or not. I went down to London about a month later and Peter asked me whether I wanted to be a producer. I said no because it would be a warm office in the centre of London and I wouldn't have liked that. I said I was going to go off instead and be a reporter, and I said that I thought I had a good chance of being a reporter on the Daily Mail. He loved all that. It sounded like I was being aggressive and he had been a Fleet Street reporter himself. Although I had only answered him truthfully, it clearly impressed him that I was intent on being a reporter.

Worst moment

The worst time for me was also the best time, when I was outside the Paris embassy with Margaret Thatcher days before she resigned as Prime Minister in 1990. It looked like a bad mistake by me, because as I said she wasn't going to come out and talk, she did come out and I was pushed aside. But everyone was very excited about that instead, and it ended up being the biggest scoop of my career. That was my big break really. If you're competent on television you don't get noticed, but if something goes spectacularly wrong it makes for a great moment of television.

Top tips

You've got to be very determined to be a reporter. When I went to the careers people at Oxford University years ago and said that I wanted to be a journalist, they acted extremely superior. They dismissed journalism as just another fashion, the way advertising had been the year before. The more they poured cold water on the idea the more I was determined to do it.

I think it's a bit like going on the stage. The first advice to anyone interested is not to do it. If anyone comes to me to ask my advice because they want to be a journalist, I say: "Don't do it." I don't encourage them because I know that if you really want to be a journalist you don't need encouragement.

I think that anyone who reads this for advice on their career shouldn't become a journalist. It's one of those paradoxes. I think the more doubts you have that journalism is your interest, and the more you accept those doubts, the less good you are going to be as a journalist. If you meet a journalist who is very easily put off and downhearted, you know they can't be any good. There aren't that many jobs like it, and if you're attracted to it, that should mean you can't really think of anything else you want to do.

John Sergeant's autobiography 'Give Me Ten Seconds' is out now in hardback, published by Macmillan, at £20