russian at heriot—watt university in edinburgh, and then in your final year you received a scott trust bursarythe guardian to study journalism. and i think you were quite clear at that point that you wanted to be a columnist. why? because i had been very politically involved and my entry into writing was partly because i'd studied languages and studied to be an interpreter, and i like to manipulate words, but it was also because i had been very involved politically, almost precociously, and that i thought i had things to say. and what i didn't realise at the time was the degree to which reporting, running out and talking to people, finding out, all of that, is the nuts and bolts of everything, including column writing. so as someone who hadn't done an awful lot ofjournalism and heriot—watt didn't have a student newspaper for the first couple of years we were there, my sense of being a journalist was about writing my thoughts and, of course, because i was 21 or 22, i also assumed that everybody would be interested in my thoughts, which, when i look back at it now is a little bit fanciful. well,