Motorcycle Journalist

Name: Marc Potter. Age: 26. Salary: Around £12,000 for a trainee. Hours: 45-plus per week. Special requirements: Riding and writing talent and a willingness to work long hours! Work Bike: Whatever’s being tested. Bike Extras: None.

Riding around fields at the age on 14 on a Honda C90 field bike, Potter lived and dreamed of testing bikes for a living. But it took three years on £35 a week on a Youth Training Scheme before he got the chance to train as a journalist. It was a long slog from the YTS to a permanent job on MCN’s news desk, where an opportunity arose to become junior road tester.

After paying his dues there, his ability to ride and write (a rarer commodity than you’d think!) won him the position of Chief Road Tester and then Features Editor. He runs his own team of riders and journalists on MCN and gets the pick of the crop on what he rides. He said: ” I get different opinions from everyone I meet. Some people want to buy me a drink and others want to start a fight, but this really is my dream job and I worked my socks off for it. I’ve travelled the world, been places and ridden bikes I’d never dreamed of, from the latest road bikes to exotic GP machinery. Very different to when I started, riding around in the dead of winter on a £200 hack.

” The downside of the job, if there is one, is getting the new bikes to test in the UK in the dead of winter and having to push them to their limits on frozen roads to make sure MCN gets the story first, But it’s not all about riding. The job of features Editor is as much office-based, planning features and ensuring features and tests are up to MCN’s strict standards.

For more info visit: www.tastelifegetpaid.com for opportunities on EMAP’s motorcycle magazines.