Arriving uncharacteristically early to the retail park which housed the Costa Coffee I was to meet Phillip at, I turned off the car engine and instinctively checked my phone. As the drone of BBC Radio Potsford’s daily phone-in was cut short, I messaged Phillip on Facebook to let him know of my arrival. No sooner had I sent the message, Phillip had replied to say that he was sat inside by the window, having still managed to beat me there. At this, I picked up my Dictaphone and other essentials and rushed through the icy air into the refuge of the coffee shop.

Phillip waved me down immediately, his dyed black hair shimmering under the glow of a nearby lamp as he sipped his coffee. Broad-shouldered and immaculately dressed, he clasped my hand in a firm handshake and, once I’d ordered and received my drink, broke energetically into a sweeping monologue about his enthusiasm for my area of research, before grilling me on my methodological approach and academic career plans. Initially taken aback by this beguiling start, we soon settled into the well-versed debate around the relative worth of qualitative and quantitative research and my rather messy approach to data collection. Dictaphone set to record and settled into my flimsy metallic chair, it was time to interview this man whom Paul had assured me would add something ‘different’ to my data. (Extract from fieldnotes, 11/03/20)