Carolyn Brown is still on her gap year. Having applied for deferred entry to university in order to spend a year writing for her hometown weekly newspaper The Crewe Chronicle, she was seduced by the glamour of seeing her by-line in print and the £9.00-a-week pay packet.
 
Her career in radio started at Radio City in Liverpool. She wrote and asked to look round the studios and ended up being given a voice-test and an interview for a job that she hadn't meant to apply for.
 
After what she describes as a "brief flirtation" with television (and a more enduring love-affair with India) in the 1980s, Carolyn joined Radio 4 presentation in 1991 on a six month contract and has been there ever since.
 
"Professionally-speaking it was a special privilege to be the newsreader on duty the day the Queen Mother died, undoubtedly the most moving and memorable day of my working life." On a lighter note, as a keen sailor and "Yachtmaster", reading the shipping forecast still gives her a special thrill. "Though friends complain I sound too smug, sitting in a cosy studio telling them that all hell is about to break loose in sea areas Wight, Portland and Plymouth!"