Interviewing heavyweight politicians like Tony Blair and Michael Heseltine, as well as top entertainers like Joan Collins and Jimmy Tarbuck have been among the highlights. But it is the sheer diversity of

his career in journalism that has given Phil Gillam so much pleasure over the years, from having been to sea with the RNLI to having flown in an RAF jet fighter.

Today Phil is a writer and production journalist with a regular weekly column in the Shropshire Star evening newspaper. Entitled Shrewsbury Diary, the column gives Phil a chance to present his own whimsical view of life in the county town.

Phil was born and brought up in Shrewsbury, attending the Lancasterian and Belvidere schools before sampling the student lifestyle at Shrewsbury College. After successfully completing the MNA (Midland News Association) training scheme at Wolverhampton, he became a journalist in 1976, initially working for the Shrewsbury Chronicle.

In the years that followed he worked for the Sunday Independent in Devon and then the Hull Times in Yorkshire before returning to the Midlands to join the staff of the Staffordshire Newsletter and then (completing the circle back to the MNA) the Express & Star's Stafford Chronicle. It was during this time that Phil was also editor of his own pet project, Slipstream , a magazine devoted chiefly to philosophical and sociological issues.

In 1988, he changed jobs again, crossing the county boundary from Staffordshire back to his native Shropshire to become primarily a production journalist with the Shropshire Star. Here he has worked as Deputy Features Editor, Entertainments Editor, news sub-editor and columnist.

Over the years, Phil has reported on educational issues, general elections, all aspects of the arts, the work of the emergency services, the 1984 miners' strike, and expressions of great anger and frustration within the National Health Service during the 1980s. He has interviewed pop stars, politicians, theatre managers, shop owners, dustmen and mayors.

Passionate about pop music, Phil writes regularly on the subject and has also brought his enthusiasm and specialist knowledge to programmes on BBC Radio Shropshire. Outside of journalism, he has worked for the Department of Social Security and, just for the adventure of it, as a kibbutz volunteer, assembling agricultural irrigation systems in Israel. Phil is married with three sons. He and his family returned to live in his beloved Shrewsbury in 1989.