Driving a large van delivering cakes and in the North West of England, getting up at 3.00 or 4,00 in the morning. This was the start of my career after art school. My intention to save enough money living at ‘home’ with the ‘rents’ to enable me to kick start a glamorous career in advertising in London. I hoped to find a ‘flat’ with my college mates in the West End somewhere and live the life of Riley.

In an effort to help me, and my parents never did anything not to help me, my mother said she’s pay for me to have a suit made. I was a ‘big lad’ at the time and was not going to look a dray horse in the mouth. In a spirit of fairness she also engaged the same old tailor bloke to make one for my brother. When asked by the tailor ‘which side he dressed’, my brother did not understand and simple said, ‘nearest the window’. As he measured me up for this suit he kept muttering about me being a ‘big lad’ doing nothing for my self confidence. When the suit came it fitted well and would have sufficed for a trip to Antarctica, a warm woollen suit and waistcoat that my mother thought was guaranteed to get me the job.

After a few months on the cake run, which did not help my weight, I decided that I’d got enough savings amassed in the Post Office Savings Bank to head for the ‘smoke’. One of my first interviews was before I’d got anywhere to live in London, so I took the train, it was June, my mother insisted that I wore the new serge wooly suit, misundestanding the climate differences between the North and South, I headed for the interview, large portfolio in hand, deoderant working overtime. By the time I got across London to the site of the interview I was probably a fine shade of pink.

I did nt get the job. Just a little encouragement from one of the secretaries who looked down on me from a great height in the reception area as I had sat on one of their ground level sofas. I looked up at a very fine pair of legs which said ” We’re so sorry Mr Davies, and hope you have a safe journey home”

The life of Riley was still some way off. I must have looked like a cooked beetroot on that sofa.