It’s 6.25pm on Monday 2 June 2014 and my heart is racing.
After 20 years as a national newspaper journalist, plus a few years of working in the City before that, I am about to learn whether I can cut it as a television presenter.
I’d done plenty of broadcast journalism over the years – for BBC Radio Five Live’s Weekend Business and Wake Up To Money, BBC Radio Four’s Today programme and regular appearances on Sky News – but these were as a guest pundit or, in media jargon, what is known as the “presenter’s friend”.
This was different. Sky News had entrusted me to step into the sizeable shoes of Jeff Randall, its influential business presenter from September 2007 to March 2014.
After four or five rehearsals using Jeff’s old scripts, under the tutelage of experienced director Neil Hunter and with colleagues Dafydd Rees, Katie Mandel and Hannah Capella acting as guests, I was deemed ready.
Broadcasting from Sky’s original City Studio, on the 15th floor of the iconic Gherkin building on St Mary Axe, I awaited Neil’s cue before uttering the introductory words:
“From the heart of the City, this is Ian King Live.”
That first half hour show whizzed by: our guests were Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of power generator Drax; Clive Efford, the shadow minister for sport; and Lily Cole, the model and actress. Not bad on a slow news day although during the programme, overseen by my first producer Peter Hoskins, we also broke news that Frank Lampard would be leaving Chelsea.
The adrenalin was still pumping after the show but abated somewhat after John McAndrew, then executive editor and director of content at Sky News, called to declare it “a bloody brilliant start”.
Other guests that week included Andy Griffiths, UK chief executive of Samsung; Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor; Sir Tom Hunter, the…
