I am pretty sure I have my armpit hair to thank for my journalism career. If I hadn’t decided to let it all hang out during my second year at Edinburgh – and write about it in a double page spread in Student, complete with photos – I would quite possibly not be a reporter at The Guardian now.

The resulting article won me Student Journalist of the Year at The Herald’s student media awards and runner-up Best Feature Writer at The Guardian’s gongs in 2002, and I was off. Within months I was writing regularly for The Herald and The Guardian, and the summer I graduated (with a first in German – not that it ever made any difference to my career. Nobody ever even bloody asked) I received a call from the editor of G2, The Guardian’s feature section, offering me a job.

So that would be my first piece of advice to any budding journalist – produce one, brilliant, shameless article that gets everyone talking. Do something a bit weird, or brave (I’m not saying that shunning the razor for a year was in any way courageous, by the way, though strangers did stop me in George Square after the article came out and whisper how “brave” I was), and you stand a better chance than most at getting noticed than if you spend your whole time writing match reports of the intra mural hockey.

Witness Johann Hari, the Independent columnist, who hit the bigtime in 2002 when, still a student, he wrote a piece for G2 about how he infiltrated the far-right by shagging a neo-Nazi.

Shamelessness generally is a very important quality for journalists. I’ve done all sorts of stupid things for my job at an allegedly serious newspaper – spent a day being rude to people in Perth the day it was voted Britain’s most polite town, come to the office dressed as Madonna for some ill-advised fashion feature and written a 2000-word piece on my favourite places to have a wee, to name but three.

While I’m on the topic, can I just say that it’s also important to sometimes say no. I once refused point blank to try to sneak into the Sun’s offices with a fake bomb for a media story. And the other week I had a tantrum when the newsdesk wanted me to wear a stab-proof vest on the mean streets of Peckham, south London, to prove some tenuous point about knife crime.

Anyway, I digress. Once I had won an award, I decided it was about time someone paid me for my genius, so I started spending a lot less time in the Pleasance basement messing around with my Student chums and concentrated my energy on freelancing. This I managed through a combination of bare-faced cheek, luck and two good work experience placements at The Herald and The Guardian.

Work experience is pretty essential for all journalists, even those hateful, all too numerous sods whose mummies and daddies already have a column in a national newspaper. Just don’t let any media organisation take you for a ride. No one should work for free for more than a month. I did a fortnight. And when you get a placement, don’t mess it up by being an arse. When I did my stints, I didn’t think I was doing anything extraordinary, but having watched numerous “workies” flounder at The Guardian and generally make everyone want to kill them, I realise the tack I employed was a good one. All I did was made sure I had read all the papers in the run-up to my placement, then turned up, bombarded the editors with ideas, offered to do make tea and do just about anything to make everyone’s lives easier without being annoying. Gross, I know. But the result was that while I did spend one long morning opening competition entries for some tedious Education Guardian competition, I did end my placement with loads of articles with my name on them for my mum to cut out. And, just as importantly, contacts.

One other thing I did, prior to all the awards stuff, was get in touch with the journalist I admired most – at that time, The Guardian’s chief interviewer, Simon Hattenstone. I think I wrote him an email saying “I think you’re great. I do interviews for the student paper. Can I call you for some advice?” To his immense credit, he replied. He still helps me today.

What also helped was setting up and running my own magazines. I did a music fanzine for a while, and in the second year of university set up Fest, a publication covering the Edinburgh Festivals that is still going strong six years on. Sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk at The Guardian, writing some boring story about the weather or something, I think back to my time in Edinburgh and think, ahhhhhhh, those were the days. Then I remember that I was broke and had to go to lectures and read Goethe and stuff, and realise I’m quite happy where I am, thank you very much.

So what’s it like being a reporter for The Guardian? Well. I love it. For someone with a hint of attention deficit disorder, it can’t be beaten. Monday might see me in court covering some horrible rape trial, Tuesday I might be knocking on doors on an estate trying to gather information about the latest teen murder, Wednesday I might be writing something frivolous for G2, Thursday I’m in the office tracking breaking news and Friday I’m working on an investigation. What other job would offer that variety?

That’s a typical week as a news reporter, anyway. My first two years at The Guardian were spent writing and editing on G2. Then I decided I had had enough of being in the office too much, so lobbied my bosses to move from features to news. By some miracle, they let me, and even seconded me for almost a whole year to retrain. They sent me to Sheffield University to do their excellent print journalism course, where I learnt shorthand, media law and other extremely useful things I would never have paid myself to gain. People always ask me whether it’s worth doing a post-grad journalism course and I would say: it depends. If you want to be a news reporter, it will help. If you’re interested in sport, features or arts, it might not be worth the money. You’d be better off working to fund your work experience placements. But it worked for me. A month or so after finishing my exams, I got a job on news.

Does that answer everything? Hope so. One last thing: I shaved it off.