The day I received my A-level results, back near the dawn of time, I was working on Stockport market. I took a break from helping my colleagues sell dress lengths of Crimpelene fabric at £1 a yard to go to the nearest telephone box to call my mother. The postman had delivered the official notification from the exam board, containing those three fateful capital letters which, I thought at the time, would determine my future.

They were, she told me with her characteristic insouciance, a C, a D and an E. Hardly a testament to the grammar school education I had received, but she made no judgement on my achievement, such as it was. I needed only two Es to secure a place on a one-year journalism course at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire) so I was able to reassure her that my........

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