Two things came out of that whole experience for me. One is that to this day, I always treat the runners on Jessie Wouldlike royalty: iPods for their birthdays, posh spa treatments at Christmas; toxic debt or no toxic debt, the way I look on it is, they’ve earned it, the hard way. The other thing is…that’s where I first met Sam. Vivid memory; it was just before a live broadcast and there he was, patiently waiting behind the scenes to take part in a panel discussion piece about debt to profit ratios or something equally boring. Radiating confidence, not a nerve in his body. He ordered a coffee from me and I was so petrified, my shaking hands accidentally spilled some of it onto the lap of his good suit, but instead of ranting and raving about it, he couldn’t have been sweeter. Just laughed it off, said it was an accident, that he’d be sitting down behind a desk anyway so he could be naked from the waist down and sure no one would even know the difference. Then he smiled that smile; so dazzling it should nearly come with a ping!sound effect, and I was a complete goner.

Course it turned out every female on News Timefancied him, but he was dating some famous, leggy, modelly one back then, so it went without saying that we all knew none of us had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting near him. But just for a bit of devilment, myself and the make-up girls used to invent all kinds of imaginary sex scenarios about him, like he was the ultimate Prince Charming; utterly unattainable, but great craic to fantasise about.

‘Me and Sam Hughes, on a sun lounger, at sunset, looking out over the Caribbean…’

‘No, I’ve a better one, me and Sam Hughes in a dressing room, just before the show…’

‘No, NO. My go: me and Sam in a log cabin during a power cut with only a king-sized double bed for our entertainment centre…’

…was all you could hear along the corridors of Channel Six on the days we knew he’d be in. We even had a ‘hottie alert’ system, whereby the minute one of us saw his car in the car park, we were duty bound to text the others IMMEDIATELY, so everyone had a fair and equal chance to get their make-up on.

Anyway, whenever I did see Sam after the whole, mortifying coffee-on-the-crotch episode, which was maybe about once a month or so, he always made a point of asking me how I was getting on in the new job. Always friendly, always playfully nicknaming me Woodsie, always encouraging, always respectful and never, ever someone who looked down on me as just a humble gofer with Pot Noodle for brains.

Then, one day about three months later, he found me in the staff canteen, hysterically trying to babysit Diva Di’s bratty eight- and ten-year-old boys, who were running riot around the place and ambushing me with lumpy cartons of strawberry-flavoured yoghurt. The pair of them had completely doused me in it; clothes, hair, jeans, everything, soaked right through to my knickers. And, of course, life being what it is, at that very moment, in sauntered Sam, as Darcy-licious as ever. He let out a yell at the kids, which did actually manage to shut them up, then sat me down and helped dry me off with a load of paper napkins. I’ll never forget it; he x-rayed me with jet-black eyes, laughed and said, ‘To think they say working in TV is glamorous.’ I gamely managed a grin, suddenly aware that he dated famous models and here I was, stinking of sticky, strawberry yoghurt-y crap.

‘So, tell me. Is this really what you signed up for, Woodsie?’

Now the thing about Sam is that he can be a bit like those motivational speakers you’d normally see on Oprah;you know, the ones who convince you that you can turn your life around in seven days, that kind of thing. It’s like he comes with a double dose of drive and it can be infectious.

So I told him everything. Out it all came; about how I wanted to work for Channel Six so desperately that I really was prepared to do anything without question. Including letting Diva Di take complete and utter advantage of me. I was so terrified of losing my job, I explained, that I just hadn’t the guts to point out that babysitting her horrible children and blow-drying under her armpits with a hair dryer, was well above and beyond my job description.

‘And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ I remember him asking, a favourite question of his.

‘In front of the camera,’ I told him without even having to pause for thought. That’s all I’d ever wanted or dreamed about. I can even remember the exact phrase I used, ‘I’d ring the Angelus bell if I had to.’ But then back came all the old insecurities; would someone like me ever be given a shot, would I even be good enough or would I fall flat on my face and make a roaring eejit of myself?

‘Are you kidding me, Woodsie?’ he grinned, wiping a bit of strawberry yoghurt off my hair with a napkin. ‘A knockout like you? They’d be bloody lucky to have you. And always remember that.’

Anyway, I think right there and then he must have seen some spark of ambition in me that mirrored his own, because any time I’d bump into him after that, he’d always make a point of asking me who exactly I’d sent my CV off to, what contacts I’d made, did I know what internal jobs were coming up? Kind of like a career guidance officer with a grinding work ethic, except one that I fancied the knickers off.

Then, by the end of that year, through an awful lot of grovelling/hassling/pounding down doors, etc., I eventually managed to land a proper front-of-camera gig. It was only doing the weekend late-night weather report (at 10 p.m., midnight, then again at 2 a.m.) but to me, it was the stuff of dreams. It was there I first met the lovely Emma, in fact; she used to do the news report, I’d do the weather, then the two of us would skite off to some nightclub and laugh the rest of the night away. We were exactly the same age, we’d both started working at Channel Six at the same time and what can I say? From day one, we just bonded.

The only downside was, I never bumped into Sam any more. In fact, apart from Emma, the only person I ever saw regularly was the nightwatchman at the security hut on my way to and from work. I kept up with Sam through the papers, but of course the only thing I was ever really interested in was who he was dating. An ultra-successful, Alpha female type usually; his identikit women always seemed to be groomed, glossy, gorgeous and it went without saying, high achievers. It was like his minimum dating requirement was that you had to work an eighty-hour week and earn a minimum six-figure annual salary. So I put him to the back of my mind and for the next few years just kept my head down and got on with it. Funny thing was though, the harder I worked, the luckier I seemed to get. It was miraculous; as though the planets had aligned for me and, even more amazingly, I seemed to be able to do no wrong. Job followed job at Channel Six, until eventually, hallelujah be praised, the Jessie Wouldshow came about.

Then, flash forward to about two years ago, when I was at the Channel Six Christmas party with Emma, both of us pissed out of our heads. She was celebrating the show being commissioned for a second series, I was drowning my sorrows having just found out that my then boyfriend was seeing someone else behind my back. During Christmas week too, the worthless, faithless bastard. Everyone kept coming over to say congratulations on the show and I was obliged to beam and act all delighted. All whilst sending Cheater Man about thirty text messages, ranging in tone from disbelief to accusation by way of pleading. Waste of time though; every one of them was completely ignored. It was beyond awful; Christmas is when I lost my darling dad and God knows, given the highly dysfunctional background I come from, it’s a hard enough time of year to get through without adding ‘serially single man-repeller’ into the mix as well. And then I saw Sam. Also alone, also dateless. My heart stopped; I’d forgotten how uncomfortably handsome he was. He came straight over, congratulated me on the show’s success and then, sensing something was amiss, asked me what was up. Now it takes an awful lot for me to start snivelling or bawling, but the combination of too much Pinot Grigio and being dumped and missing Dad was all just too much for me. I knew if I didn’t get the hell out of there immediately, I was in danger of making a complete and utter holy show of myself in front of him and everyone else, so I blushed scarlet, mumbled some lame excuse about having another party to go to and bolted for the door.