Paul knew he wanted to be a journalist before he left Oxford. He had been bored studying law but hadn’t had the confidence, back then, to change course. Studying law didn’t, however, stop him writing. He contributed to every Oxford magazine he could: Parsons Pleasure and Mesopotamia, the satirical ones he and Richard Ingrams produced; Cherwell and Isis, the long-established Oxford University magazines. Fortunately, his father knew some major players in publishing, and after leaving Oxford he moved to Glasgow to join the staff of one of Scotland’s largest circulation newspapers. He spent the rest of his life working for a variety of national newspaper and magazine titles, was named twice as the Journalist of the Year, by What the Papers Say; Campaigning Journalist of the Year in the British press Awards, and Campaigning Journalist of the Decade in the year 2000.