Martin's CV
I’m a freelance journalist, columnist and author, specialising in motoring, but writing about a whole raft of other subjects. I'm a contributor to The Sunday Telegraph, London Evening Standard, What Diesel and Classic Cars magazine, where I'm a columnist.
Recent non-car work includes a story on the Bonzo Dog Band for Mojo magazine, I also write for Saga magazine, and the Women's Institutes' WI Life, where I write a column called 'Confessions of a WI speaker.'
I've produced four humour books for New Holland Publishing, and Write On! a book about writing from a journalist's perspective.
I also make video road tests for Daily Telegraph motoring agony uncle Honest John (see www.honesjohn.co.uk).
Early Career
After being almost expelled from a vegetarian co-educational boarding school with a CSE (Grade 2) in history, I re-sat my O Levels then worked as a cycle messenger for a Shepherds Bush-based optician.
Fired for going on holiday, I failed to get a job chauffeuring ‘80s pop duo Yazoo in a Ford Fiesta, but did land a bin liner tele-sales job, working for two women in an office near Baker Street. Here I encountered fellow sales desperadoes including an alcoholic who claimed to have piles and made regular trips to the loo clutching a large grip (which contained his cider bottles), a Rick Wakeman look alike from Lincolnshire who was a born again Christian and believed a deceased member of the rock band Lynrd Skynrd was his guardian angel, and the woman whose small baby regurgitated its breakfast into my shoe just as I was flogging 5,000 bags to a convent.
Fleet Street
From here I moved on to Fleet Street, taking a part time job as a foot messenger for the Press Association, delivering photos to all the national newspapers before they decamped to Wapping and Canary Wharf. As I trudged from the Express to the Sun to the Mirror, sharing lifts and foyers with such journalistic luminaries as Jean Rook, Sir John Junor and Stafford Hildred (the man inside your telly), it felt as if I was viewing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire from the gutter.
I also started writing. A latent car bore, I’d harboured a desire to become a motoring journalist since my early teens, so approached Car magazine with some ideas. The editor didn't’t think much of these, but reckoned I’d written 'an articulate letter' so gave me a week to put together 1,000 words on an old Fiat. This was hand written as I traveled to and from work on the District Line.
Writing career begins
Having persuaded a secretary in the office next to the bin liner floggers to type up the end result, I made it into print for the first time, and began approaching and writing for magazines including Options and Autocar, then made a disastrous career move and became a copywriter/public relations person for a small PR agency in Berkshire.
Having no dress sense, no tact and mild word blindness did not help. Nor did innate physical clumsiness. I managed to destroy eighteen telephones in twelve months, by walking on flexes and accidentally pouring tea into the handsets.
The company was a partnership. When the principles un-partnered I greeted redundancy with a glad cry and went back to part time freelance journalism and pub work, collecting glasses, delivering food and cleaning the loos at a riverside pub in West London.
I learned much more about public relations here, but the purchase of a houseboat meant that I had to find a real job, so I applied for everything journalistic advertised in the UK Press Gazette and the Guardian. Eventually I wound up as a reporter on a magazine for personnel officers.
Meat and Sewage
I discovered that personnel officers all seemed to be called Brian, learned how to write to deadline, and inject interest into a dry subject. My career continued along its lopsided way, including a three-month stint as news editor for Meat Trade’s Journal (left due to musical differences), and a year writing about sewage pipes and bent local councilors for ‘Surveyor’ magazine.
They were a nice crew at Surveyor, but frustration was setting in, so I resigned without a job to go to, just as the last recession arrived. After spending nearly a year on the dole (highlights included living on a houseboat with no heating, making a tin of pilchards last for two days as a principle meal, the ‘career’ started to pick up. I began writing about cars again, firstly for the Big Issue, then the Guardian and Daily Telegraph. At the age of thirty I achieved the ambition I’d nurtured since I was 13, and became a fully-fledged, freelance motoring hack.
Hack on wheels
These days I write for titles including the Telegraph, Independent and Evening Standard. I freelanced as commissioning editor for the Standard’s ‘ESWheels’ supplement, developing the features list from scratch, working with other freelance writers, and editing the title on a day-to-day basis. Other outlets include Classic Cars magazine, where I also write a column, and I’ve contributed to Choice and Woman’s Journal amongst others.
I’ve written non-car items on bee keeping, rural dating agencies, rabbit breeders and life on a houseboat, was used as a talking head by Radio 4's Open Book, BBC2’s Top Gear (about old bangers and self-immolating Reliant Robins), and became an occasional ‘think piece’ contributor to Radio 4’s ‘Home Truths,’ ruminating about houseboats and chicken keeping. I’ve also been used as a talking head on Carlton Television’s Pulling Power motoring programme (subjects covered: usable classics, convertibles and the lovely Ford Anglia).
Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance
Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance, my first book, a comic novella/how to book on life, death and chickens, was published in 2003. It’s currently in its third reprint. I've written a sort of follow up, Travels with My Chicken, along with ‘Fowl!’ and 'Hope is a Strategy, both parodies of American business self-help books, and Write On. a book on writing from a journalist's perspective, appeared this summer.
I've also collaborated with photographer Eleanor Bentall with 'What is the Perfect Pong?' a children's picture story book (see www.perfectpong.co.uk).
To promote ‘Hen, etc’ I’ve travelled from King’s Lynn to Edinburgh with various chickens and talked about the process of writing the book, keeping hens and the interaction between a man a woman and a flock. I did much the same thing for 'Travels.