Rick's rare skills

As an adolescent, Paul Smurthwaite's daughter Anna was determined to make a career in journalism; but she feared that her stammer would make this impossible. Rick Norsworthy stepped in to help.

She writes:

Speaking to another stammerer may take a phenomenally long time but is indescribably comforting. Rick not only gave me the confidence to believe stammering and journalism weren’t as horrifyingly incompatible as I had come to think, he also encouraged me to take the City Lit course which did more for me in a couple of weeks than all the years of speech therapy. He (and Mary for that matter) also had the knack of making you feel you were the one person in the room he really wanted to talk to - which is a rare skill. ■