I KNOW many teenagers are generally thought to be bone idle and lacking in gumption, but I was possibly the worst of the lot.

This dawned on me last week when I came to brief my son on my personal history. He was asked to write a biography for primary school on a member of his family and so I detailed my past for him.

And it was mostly very dull stuff, punctuated by spectacular bouts of laziness and absence of any initiative, particularly during my teenage years.

It may be 30 years ago this all happened but it makes me shudder to think how useless I was, so I thought it worth sharing just in case any teens bother to read my column.

I aspired to be a journalist from the age of 14, so that impressed the careers teachers because virtually no one else at my school had a clue what they wanted to become.

But I did nothing to further the idea apart from ask for leaflets. A classmate, probably the only other person with an idea of their future, told me she was applying to the London College of Printing to join a periodical journalism course.

She was accepted and urged me to try it. So I did and went for an interview while I was studying for my A-levels.

It was a decent course, but for some mystifying reason they liked me and I too was accepted on condition I achieved a minimum of just one grade E at A level.

It gave me the perfect excuse to take my foot off the pedal. I gave up sociology and took just two A levels which I passed with mediocre marks. I didn’t care, and I remember whooping in the streets when I received these results because I’d made it into journalism college.

At college, I did okay but because it was a magazine course, there wasn’t the absolute requirement to achieve 100wpm shorthand. So I didn’t get it, and settled for a lesser speed.

It was only when I left college that it dawned on me I didn’t really like magazines, didn’t read them and didn’t want to work for them. I wanted to be on a newspaper, but had foolishly settled for the wrong course because I hadn’t bothered to research the options.

The qualifications for the periodical training turned out to be vastly different and newspaper editors didn’t want me as a result. To be fair, magazine editors weren’t that interested either.

It was only after months being out of work that I had a moment of realisation.

I went for an interview for a magazine and the editor kept asking: “So what have you been doing as a journalist?” I repeatedly told him I was unemployed and he kept on repeating the question.

I assumed he had a hearing problem, but then the light turned on in my foggy brain.

A journalist does not need a job to be a journalist. He just needs to write.

I rushed down to the library and, lo and behold, found an A4 newsletter entitled Disabled Monthly, written from the bedroom of a volunteer.

I rang the editor, offered to work for free and did so for several editions. Not only did it give me experience, it was also a worthwhile voluntary mission and it enhanced my CV as a reporter.

A proper job soon followed. Well, I say proper because they paid me £100 per month for three days-a-week reporting on a London free paper. I soon found another, better-paid job, on another free weekly, and after about a year moved to a paid-for traditional newspaper.

I still lacked the formal qualifications including the shorthand, so eventually was sent to do a 10-week block release course, and eventually aged 24 passed my professional exams to become a senior reporter.

It had taken me five years to do something I could have achieved in two had I bothered in my teens to check out the correct options.

There is even less excuse for the youngsters of today to be like me because the internet will give you every pointer you need, and then it’s up to you to get off your backside and follow your dream.

If even one teenager takes my advice today then my biography of mediocrity will surely have been worth it.