My first real office job was reviewing video games alongside one of my best friends.
Every occupation that followed was compared to that - and as a result has been a bit rubbish.
As a former paperboy, newsagent cashier and current Waitrose meat department assistant/A-Level student I was hardly a logical choice to help out with a fledgling Teletext games section, but I had a few things going for me.
It was April 1993 and I had been following the work of my friend Paul at Teletext.
I was aware of Paul before I met him - he had been a couple of years above me at school, and was friends with one of my friend’s brothers. It was when I was invited to a RPG session, with him as the games master, that we got chummy.
This wasn’t your common-or-garden role-playing sword and sorcery. The first campaign began with an all-day session of a dark DC Heroes game which would become a haunting obsession over the years.
We would walk home together afterwards (no cars, no driving licenses) and talk about the stuff you bond over. In a pre-instant-gratification age, Paul had an uncanny knack for remembering the same trivial things I did, but better and with a more thorough knowledge.
Mainly we became friends because we laughed at the same things and appreciated the nerdier stuff in life - comics, sci-fi films, unconventional humour and funny noises like “a-snurrrrr a-snurrrrrrr… chal chal!”