I was a kid, yet they gave me opportunities and responsibility. I’m amazed Peter and The Sunday Times let me near a keyboard so young. The books led to the BBC offering to send me to some of the dodgiest travel destinations on earth. I stayed in touch with Peter while I was writing One Day in September about the Munich Olympics. It was partly thanks to his encouragement I wrote The New Jackals on al-Qa’ida. When I left the ST I was only about 24, but Peter encouraged me to think about writing books. After leaving The Sunday Times, Peter landed the What the Papers Say Scoop of the Year after securing a leaked copy of the Chancellor’s budget speech. He once said “make every sentence count”, and taught me silence is a great way of encouraging others to speak. But then he showed me how it should be done. I remember that when I wrote up a nuclear smuggling investigation I’d helped with, Peter read it, smiled, and said: “Look, there’s a thousand different ways of writing this” – a polite way of saying it was shite. Soon I was working on investigations into dodgy arms deals. We started talking, and soon I was doing research for him, then making a few phone calls – things snowballed. I was sorting post one night, and Peter came to collect his mail. I knew nothing about newspapers, but I knew Peter because I’d seen a TV film about an investigation he did revealing Israel had nuclear weapons. It was a crap job, but it was a foot in the door, and frankly after a year on the dole I was grateful for anything.

I met Peter Hounam, the former Sunday Times chief investigative reporter, when I was 18 and working as a postboy on the paper, sorting the mail for eight hours a day.

One Day in September by Simon Reeve