Welcome, one and all, to the inaugural posting of...JOURNEYS ON A PAPER PLANE. In this blog, you will read about my hilarious but tragic and life-affirming battles with drugs and sex addiction and my love/hate relationship with the media.

Will you bollocks.

Sorry, but all you're going to read about is my attempts to write a book that sells (and consequently, a script that sells). All I've ever wanted since I was 15 was to be a scriptwriter, seeing my lines spoken by real people on screen. I didn't care about winning an Oscar, nor whether my scripts were on TV or the big screen, or making enough to scuba dive in my bath with its solid-gold taps. No. Writing Good Stuff. That's what it's all about.

If it's any consolation, I do sort of have a love/hate relationship thing going with the media. Oo, here comes my sordid past. I actually used to be a journalist once. It was an attempt to find a job I didn't hate and in which I could use my creative skills. However, by Day Two of my grad dip course I was admitting to my classmates that I just didn't have it in me to be a reporter. It's not that I don't care about today's issues - but you try giving much of a shit about one resident's crusade to get a decent footpath for their street.

"We've got little children in this neighbourhood. What if one of them tripped and hurt themselves on this crack? They could be paralysed for life. But instead we're getting a new bike lane that no one's going to use!"

I think I wrote about 10 of those stories in three years. I should have made a template and got them to fill in the street name and quotes. In fact, that's a good money-making scheme...Templates for suburban reporters...Christ, it works for celebrity reporting too.

Anyway, I simply lacked the killer instinct to take it further. It pretty well sucks to develop relationships with your contacts in councils and schools, only to have to turn around and rip their balls off with your teeth any time a member of the public has an issue with their performance. Most of them are just trying to do their jobs like you and me. Unfortunately no one was offering a full-time position as a travel reporter with free flights to numerous exotic destinations. You have to wait for someone to die to get one of those. Or kill them. If I'd had to work as a reporter for that length of time, I would have killed myself.

I think the Fourth Estate is a crucial part of any civilisation. At its best, it exposes corruption and injustice, keeping our guvners in line. At its worst, it's...a rotten, oozing, reeking, greedy, vacuous, trollopy little  mawworm. If you haven't read Flat Earth News by Guardian reporter Nick Davies yet, do. It's depressingly true. Doesn't matter if you're accurate anymore, just as long as you're first. Get the quotes, forget the rest. I wash my hands of it. Bah.

Now I work for a large regional library service, buying books and spreading the joy of literature. It's much better. But it's still...not scriptwriting.

Watch this space.