Bite Size Comms

I was truly surprised to be named among the top 50 freelance PR practitioners in the Independent Impact 50 Awards 2026. Understatement, of course! You could have scraped me off the ceiling, yet I was told that I could only tell the cat until the awards ceremony on 7 May. I informed the cat (his name is van Helsing, yes, I know…), but Helsing just gave a meow like the usual “Feed me, bro”. 

This was the first award I had ever entered. I am 64, so possibly the last! I never thought awards were for people like me. I just get on with my PR thing. No big names. No flashing lights (especially blue ones). But I really liked the questions this award posed, and the idea of celebrating the commitment, contribution and impact of the UK’s independent PR sector. So I went for it. Only 50 quid down the drain if it came to nothing.

I write my story for anyone who sometimes feels “impostor syndrome”. I have always felt like an outsider, but I’m fine with that. I never went to university, despite doing well at school. Not for people like me, my father said. That continued throughout my life. The original working-class Del Boy, that’s me: born and raised in Peckham, South London, I got lucky and fell into opportunities. I got a job with the Foreign Office as a junior diplomat. I was promoted to Deputy British Ambassador to Latvia in my early 30s. I have no idea what the Foreign Office saw in me, apart from the storytelling during my recruitment interview about living in the Arctic at 17 (that’s true, thanks to an opportunity from the Royal Geographic Society for people like me). Possibly the interviewers thought, “He will survive two years in Moscow”, as that is where they sent me two weeks after my 21st birthday. Fast-forward a few decades. After working for the FCO in public diplomacy and for a human rights charity, I moved deeper into PR. 16 years ago, thanks to Cambridge Marketing College’s co-founder, Charles Nixon, I was offered the opportunity to teach PR as a freelancer, as well as do my own PR thing. Still doing that with the wonderful CMC. And I got PR qualified 16 years ago and Chartered 10 years ago.

As I will never get another chance to give an Oscars-like speech, I dedicate my award to the 175 PR apprentices I have had the pleasure of ‘helping’ (some might disagree and say I spent the whole time storytelling!) since 2019, and to the hundreds more CIPR qualifications students. I would also like to thank my other important client, 1st for Awarding, for trusting me as a freelance PR assessor. I truly believe in PR apprenticeships as an opportunity for “people like me”.

I still don’t know what I want to do as a career. At 64. I’ve always been creative, and for the next year I’m going to prepare for Royal Photographic Society accreditation (I’m already a member). Impostor syndrome is just a state of mind. Only shouty people don’t feel it, and who trusts people who start every sentence with “I”? Social mobility may hold one back. “Not for people like me”, lack of money to open up opportunities, and lack of confidence due to one’s social status. See it all as a challenge! I’m still an activist on human rights and climate change issues. The important things to me will never change. They have been part of my psyche since my teenage years.

A toast to all my fellow Independent Impact 50 Award winners. Cheers!

[Image of small wooden rosettes against a blue background from Unsplash+]