I
t is 1972. I am 27. My friend Dusty Wesker, wife of Arnold Wesker who is great mate of my then husband Tom, thrusts an Evening Standard at me announcing a competition they are running whereby the prize is to be the paper’s restaurant critic. With one or maybe even both of my two small daughters – the younger only a few months old – in my arms or round my feet I am thinking I probably shouldn’t be considering a job, but grievously I miss working, having been a copywriter at JWT and a journalist on the new, improved Radio Times. And the prize obtains only for three months…what harm can it do? I enter on the closing date.