Freelancer of the Fortnight: Nigel Henderson, UK

Click here to view Nigel Henderson's full freelance profile on Journalism.co.uk.

Why did you choose to become a freelancer?
 
I started a second stint of freelancing in 2006 after working for six years on the sports desk at the Times. I wanted to get out and do some cricket reporting and so did a deal to come off the staff rota. After a few months I travelled to Australia to write a book on the 2006/7 Ashes, returning and picking up more or less where I left off. I had first freelanced in the mid-nineties, writing for cricket magazines Third Man and Inside Edge, as well as doing the odd commission for Barnardos and Disability Now.
 
If you trained, where? If not, how did you become a freelancer?
 
I trained on the Reed Business Publishing course under the auspices of the Periodical Training Council in 1989 before stints on staff at the Wokingham Times, Coventry Evening Telegraph, the Press Association and PA Teletext, from where I moved to specialise in sport at the Royal Gazette, Bermuda's daily paper, for three years, freelancing on my return to England until the Times offered me a staff contract.
 
Do you specialise in any particular field and what areas do you write about?
 
Mainly sport, specifically cricket and tennis and non-league football when I get the chance. I have also written travel and sports business features. I am a regular ball-by-ball commentator work on the alternative cricket commentary website, Test Match Sofa. I would like to get back into arts/entertainment writing as well (I was entertainment editor at my first weekly, although showbiz gossip stuff leaves me cold), and perhaps do the odd feature on mental health issues (I was a volunteer on Mind's information phone lines about a decade ago). Much of my freelance work now is sub-editing, along with some book editing for the publisher of my four books. 
 
Which publications have you been published in?
 
Third Man (defunct), Inside Edge (defunct), the Times, the Guardian, the Wisden Cricketer, Disability Now, Barnardos magazine and for BBC Digital (coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships, 2000 and 2001).
 
Which articles, in which publication, are you the most proud of?
 
I did a feature on a drama teacher taking sessions with patients at Broadmoor, which as you can imagine was an interesting experience; an exclusive interview with the controversial Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins (the one who questioned the virgin birth etc); coverage of the Caribbean and Central American Games in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
 
What are the best and worst aspects of freelancing?
 
The best: not having someone always breathing down your neck  Worst: uncertainty, the often slow speed of payment and not knowing enough people in the right places (my networking skills could be much better).
 
Do you have any interesting anecdotes in relation to your experience as a freelancer?
 
I accidentally acquired a rival's exclusive interview with Jimmy Adams, then the captain of the West Indies, at a regional cricket match in Jamaica in 1999 when I picked up his recorder, which was identical to mine. I was ethical enough not to use it, but I always wondered what his editor said to him on his return to his office. Sorry. 

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