For those of a certain age, there is one man who was there as our conduit to adult news – John Craven and his Newsround introduced me to war (Vietnam) in the early 1970s. And now? He presents Countryfile on BBC1 – Sunday at 1720. And on the 11th April – he has managed to secure one of the journalistic scoops of his career – better than John Simpson bringing the realities of napalmed villages to school children, perhaps – me and a hedgehog!

In what might be a record for time travelled to actual interview – it took me 9 hours to get to and from the Wildwood Trust near Herne Bay, Kent. And the interview, just the one take (of course) took 2 minutes! But we did get to have lunch together, after I had made him pose for this image:

That was a fantastic hedgehog to be interviewed with – he was calm and just inquisitive enough to make it interesting.

The paperback is due out on Thursday … but I am still wallowing in the glow of being referred to as endearingly batty in the national press!