Guest Speaker-Boyd Farrow-Freelance Journalist

Boyd Farrow was the fifth guest speaker to visit the journalism students at UCF. He told of his travels to all corners of the globe with his journalistic and 'blagging' skills.

Originally Boyd aspired to be a film journalist but found it tough to break into an increasingly competitive industry. Instead he went into business journalism and used this as his angle into the industry.

During the 1980's he got a job working for Screen International, the magazine all about the business of film, and which during his time he told of meeting all of his idols except Woody Allen, including blagging hs way into pretending to be assisstant to Robert De Niro's photographer.

Unfortunately Boyd eventually became disillusioned and cynical with the film industry and decided a change was needed. And thus he began freelancing, admitting he has many a time 'blagged' his way into first class plane seats and better hotel rooms in return for writing a favourable review of the hotel or airline.

He told of the flexibility needed to be a freelance writer, admitting he rarely gets up before noon and works around three days per week. Maybe not exactly what first year university students should be told.

A few students admitted to feeling slighty skeptical of his ethics, stating he was happy to blag as much frre stuff as possible, yet when questioned of his views on the new generation of multi-tasking journalists (writer, photographer etc in one) he was unwilling to “take the food from someone else’s plate.”