You see history in the making and that is definitely the highlight. You get to meet these amazing sportsmen and women, and see them develop as individuals. You get to meet them when they're first coming into their sport. You watch them develop and you build up relationships with them.

It's a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, that's what I think. Obviously you need to be noticed by people to be given the opportunities, and I think you do have to work hard.

You don't see what's gone before. A lot of that can be long, long boring hours in the gym, long, long hours on the track or, for the likes of Paula Radcliffe, long hours out on the road in the rain running and running.

You're there right through the match, thinking all the time, making it up as you go along. We don't have anybody write our scripts. You're basically presenting to the people watching at home off the top of your head.

They're [sportsmen] willing to give up a lot of other things that perhaps we all enjoy doing: eating and drinking and playing or whatever. They give up an awful lot to perform at the highest level.

If you've done your preparation and you know the team of people that you're working with, then it makes life an awful lot easier. I still get nervous all the time. I think the best thing to do is to take a deep breath, make it simple, know what you're talking about, don't try and be fancy, don't try and be clever and just enjoy the experience.

I didn't go to university. They offered me a job as a junior reporter and I went off to work for the Southern Reporter. They sent me to college to do my NCTJ, which is a professional exam for journalists, and I started work as a print journalist purely because I was just a pest. They couldn't think of anything other than giving me a job to stop me hanging around.