It happened in an art class in the first year at Big School. Asked to draw a picture of what we would like to be ‘when we grew up’, I fashioned a rather sketchy image of what I imagined a radio studio to look like (a man, two record players and some buttons).

“And what is this?” asked Miss Jones, art teacher of slightly hippie descent.

“It’s a DJ,” I said. Quite proudly. “That’s what I’d like to be….”

She let out something of a sympathetic sigh as she turned on her heels and said “Oh, you’ll grow out of it…”

Alas I never did. Well, that’s not strictly true. After having the door shut in my face by Colchester Hospital Radio when I was 16, I ended up leaving school and drifting to Journalism College in Harlow to study the NCTJ’s one-year foundation course.

And after that, a series of jobs on local papers followed as I was bounced around offices in north and east London – before landing on the Harlow Gazette and becoming their youngest ever Sports Editor at 21. I know virtually nothing about sport but that didn’t seem to bother anyone and anyway we had a nice corner of the office, with a dart board and a kettle.

The one thing which had given me musical solace since the Ramsey School Sixth Form however was the fanzine I was writing. A PACK OF LIES was up to a circulation of around 1000 copies per issue and I was out three or four times a week at gigs trying to flog it.

A couple of us also managed to stage an editorial coup, seizing control of the Gazette’s music page and writing endlessly about the Newtown Neurotics and various other lesser-known local hopefuls (one of which, a band called Some Other Day, I also ended up managing unsuccessfully for about two months).

Then in the late Summer of ’88 I applied for a job as a sub-editor with NME and unbelievably landed the gig. And that was where it all started.

Five years at NME, moving from the Subs room to News Editor, then Live Editor and finally some trumped up position which the editor made up called New Bands Editor. A near-suicidal resignation in ’92 meant I was out of work for a while until a kind bloke called Andrew Harrison rescued me and gave me the position of reviews editor at Select magazine.

And while all this was going on, there was Q102.

Run out of a terraced house in Leytonstone, east London, Q102 was a Saturday-only pirate radio station manned by a bunch of misfits who played an unpredictable array of Indie Rock. The DJs paid £10 each, every week, to keep it going (although the envelope where you were supposed to leave your money was always full of IOUs).

I had the Saturday morning show for two hours (later extended to three) and practised at being a kind of low-rent John Peel. Then on Sunday’s I used to go into GLR and help out on Gary Crowley’s show, providing an alarmingly biased Gig Guide for the week ahead.

And the rest you probably know. With partners Tony Smith and Alan James I ran a record label called Deceptive for a few years – home of Elastica, Snuff, Collapsed Lung, Earl Brutus and Scarfo.

And in the autumn of ’93, after a series of trials, Jo Whiley and I took over hosting Radio 1’s Evening Session. Jo left to take over lunchtimes in ’97 and I carried on till the end of 2002 when the show was finally pronounced dead. This bit will be in the second book when I finally get around to writing it…

But, with apologies to Miss Jones, you can still hear us on BBC 6Music (weekdays from 4pm) and on Radio 2 (Wednesday nights at 11pm). You will also still find me in terrace S4 at the Western Homes Community Stadium for most Colchester United matches and in a variety of curry houses dotted from Camden to Kennington.

Either that, or leave a message with Nigel at the Stags Head…

Steve Lamacq