I guess the matter is proven by now: I get a big kick out of writing Autocar columns.
I’ve written one every week since 19 February 1992 – 34 years ago last month. And unless the editor says something different, I’m planning to keep them going a while longer. Three decades ago, writing My Week In Cars became a habit and a delight.
Think about it: being allowed to bang on about yourself in a magazine as great as Autocar is a privilege you couldn’t buy.
What’s the appeal? More than anything, it’s the connection I believe columns have with readers. It’s no exaggeration to say I’m in this job today because of the connection I felt, as a kid in an isolated Australian outback town in the 1960s, with a brilliant motoring columnist called Bill Tuckey, whose avuncular stuff seemed to be aimed directly at me.
Even 60 years later I can recite some of his pungent phrases, and I’ve pirated a few as well.
Tuckey is the reason I didn’t do as well at school as I might have. I was too busy reading his features and columns under the desk. Back then, I reckoned that in any writing race, Bill would have finished 10 lengths ahead of Shakespeare.
I got to know Tuckey personally, years later, and was able to tell him this to his face. He said ‘garn’ a few times, but I could tell he was pleased.
Matt Prior, I know, feels the same about column writing as me. We talk about it quite a bit on our new-fangled podcast, My Week In Cars, barely three years old, and it’s one of the reasons we find conversation so easy. We sit down with an idea or a collection of half-ideas – often still curious to see where the piece ends up.
Occasionally it can feel like a chore, knowing I’ve got to come up with something publishable in 30 to 90 minutes, but the joy of the job soon overtakes me.
The proof of that last bit is that Prior and I never miss writing a column, whether on holiday or not – partly through fear that someone will come along and do a better job but mostly because we like it so much.
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