A long time ago I was fortunate enough to have been trained by the BBC's Film Department. At the time the Beeb was awash with money because the colour license fee growth outstripped the most optimistic targets.

So when I was an assistant film editor I got to work on some brilliant and high production value programmes. I chose to work at the Open University when it was up at Alexandra Palace. Their tiny budgets meant that everything had to count and therefore their planning was brilliant.

I also worked in the TV Centre's Graphics Cutting Room (E202) which is a snack bar now. That was brilliant and I spent a small house a week in optical effects on 35mm film.

Later I moved to Lime Grove and trained designers in the use of Quantel's Paintbox. 3D computer animation was just getting going and pretty soon with the help of some clever engineers I had the HP3000 script computers pressed into service doing titles for Breakfast Time. When rendering they slowed the autocue to a crawl which had repercussions for the magazine programme London Plus. Pretty soon we had borrowed kit and I was running an 'on the day' 3D animation service to programs like Newsnight and the Money Programme.

This was all despite the very best efforts of the VT department to prevent us from using tape machines. In teh end, one of the engineers ran a secret cable from my office into the back of a little used edit suite. I could lay off animations all night an d they never cottoned on how it was done.

Moving swiftly on, I escaped before John Birt (the Dalek of Downing St) began to run the BBC with all the flair of an - well - accountant. I ran away to Southampton and began to do gameshows at TVS as it was before the purges. I enjoyed trips to Los Angeles where I worked with Ed to move Catchphrase from the PC to the Commodore Amiga.

Commodore then managed to commit suicide but by then it was someone else's problem. In a neat bit of lateral career moving I became a delivery skipper and forgot about TV for a while as I sailed millionaires yachts from cold places to warm ones.

When I left the BBC an edit suite with a reasonable graphics and effects capability would have cost around £1.5M which is why I never thought of going back to editing.

I have just spent around £2.5k on a Mac and Final Cut Studio which has all the capability I need to become an editor again. It wasn't quite as easy as buying a laptop but I am constantly amazed at the low cost of entry back into my first career.