There are certain rights of passage everyone must go through on their way from childhood to adulthood. Your first kiss, the first dance, your first car, the first time you realise that you wouldn’t exist if your mum and dad hadn’t …well you know…..

One of the other important rungs on the ladder to becoming a ‘grown-up’ is school work experience. I remember mine distinctly.

It was 1986, and someone at my school managed to mess up my placement, putting me at the local radio station instead of the TV station.

I was horrified. What kind of loser wanted a job where all you do is sit in a studio and talk to yourself all day? Admittedly, this loser has actually managed to make a career out of doing pretty much exactly that for about 22 years.

Thanks in great part to the very tolerant group of people who looked after gawky, teenage me on school work experience way back then.

I know I was annoying at times, but fortunately they saw how keen I was and took pity on me. (Admittedly the pity thing may also have been due to how bad both my hair and fashion sense were at the time). Thankfully they also didn’t shout at me when I accidentally dropped a pile of newspapers on the record that was playing live on air on my second day. Not that I’ve carried that embarrassing moment around in my heart for over 25 years of course. Anyway, that’s what growing up is all about isn’t it?

So, the next time your teen-ager arrives home having embarrassed themselves so badly their life “Isn’t worth living”, tell them to laugh it off, because they’re in great company, not least because of these ‘Hall of Famers’ who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting over the past year here at JACKfm: First there were the girls who got lost while tasked with buying a sandwich and packet of crisps in the next street….managing to return two hours later with a loaf of bread and six packets of crisps.

Then there was the girl who made everyone a cup of tea by ripping open and emptying the contents of 10 teabags into the kettle. (It was a nice cuppa though).

Special credit also goes to the young lad who didn’t realise he was supposed to remove the Post-it notes attached to the parcels and write the address on the actual packages themselves before he sent them.

And then there was the young lad who, when sent out on the street with a recorder to ask people a few questions, thought it would be a great idea to pop into BBC Oxford… To the ‘workies’ of Oxfordshire, we salute you! To the guys at the BBC, sorry about that.