Grandad, Alan Sugar, a man I met in the pub: I\u2019ve ignored them all. No wonder I don\u2019t have any advice of my own to pass on<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the best bit of advice you\u2019ve ever had? It\u2019s a common question to lob in at the end of an interview. I mean the kind of interview you might be doing to promote a book or a film or something, rather than an interview for a job. Although I suppose it might crop up there too. I wouldn\u2019t know, as I believe the last interview I had of that kind was for a job at the Birmingham Post in 1992. Not quite sure how I\u2019ve managed to swerve all that stress ever since.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019ve asked the question of someone, on the radio, the interviewee has invariably been stuck for an answer. Now I see why. I\u2019ve been asked it several times in recent months, at literary festivals and whatnot, talking about a book of these columns<\/a>. In the absence of a prepared answer, it\u2019s difficult to come up with anything interesting in reply. And preparation has never been my strong point, even though I\u2019m well aware of its importance, thanks in part to all the sage advice available on the subject: \u201cBy failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail\u201d (Benjamin Franklin); \u201cLuck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity\u201d (Seneca); \u201cSuccess depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure\u201d (Confucius); \u201cChance favours the prepared mind\u201d (Louis Pasteur).<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grandad, Alan Sugar, a man I met in the pub: I\u2019ve ignored them all. No wonder I don\u2019t have any advice of my own to pass on What\u2019s the best bit of advice you\u2019ve ever had? It\u2019s a common question to lob in at the end of an interview. I mean the kind of interview … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}