No, she hasn’t died, but she has left Biteback after five years, and we are all very sad. However, she has got a brilliant new job on Adam Boulton’s programme at Sky News and we all wish her well. I am convinced that within five years I will hear the phrase “This is Katy Scholes, Sky News, Lahore” bellowing out of my TV screen. Katy’s journey with Biteback started when she sent us this rather innovative email back in January 2009…

Hi Emily,

I see online that your team struggles in the department of tea making. Worse. I hear that you spend your valuable time debating its concoction and distribution around the office.

I can help you.
Hear me out.
I am brilliant at making tea.
I basically have a qualification in brewership. (‘basically,’ meaning… not entirely true but still highly talented.)

The plan is, I make tea for you and your colleagues, I work with you doing all manner and mixture of menial and exciting tasks for you and your team. I work my socks off for Total Politics with a little help from you, perhaps a recommendation? perhaps a chance at a meeting with you or someone in need of a ‘professional caffeine handy?’ (decaf permitted, fussiness will go unprejudiced.) The upshot is, with me dishing up great cuppa’s like Mary Poppins, you will be hailed beneath that ever coveted banner of ‘Employee of the Month’ in no time, just purely for having great taste.

I am an aspiring journalist in need of a foot in the door, it would be my pleasure to work with you as I have been reading Total Politics on a monthly basis since last July when I first discovered its juicy glossiness on a shelf in a Dubai Megamart. I have an attentive interest in the media, constantly following the news and am a huge fan of The Guardian newspaper but always read widely from other publications also. My interest in politics from a young age led to my BA from the University of Nottingham in Politics and American Studies. I read numerous magazines, (inc. Focus, The Economist, Weekend, The New African) because I love to learn, I love the process of researching and knowing more about the world. If you would be willing to give me the opportunity to start my career from the grassroots in your office… well, Emily, I will make you tea. Lots and lots of tea.

Thanks for your time, you can contact me at this email address or by phone xxxxxxxx

Kind regards,
Katy Scholes

Well anyone who can write an out of the blue email had to be worth seeing and so we took her on, first of all with Total Politics, then with Biteback Publishing where she developed her skills to take on the role of Marketing Manager.

Katy is one of those people who makes an office tick. She is loud, funny and emotional. Despite having the attention span of a flea (a bit like me) she was brilliant at her job. It was she who put together all the logistics of the Political Book Awards and ran the whole event despite having no experience of running anything like it.

I kind of knew I would lose her this year, though. Had she gone to another publisher I would have moved heaven and earth (by which I mean bribe her with more money) but when she told me what her new job was I knew it was exactly the right thing for her.

At her leaving do on Thursday night it was a tribute to her popularity that virtually everyone who has ever worked for Total Politics and Biteback Publishing turned up to wish her well. Normally at these events I give a little speech, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because I knew that the waterworks would start. Luckily it was in a pub garden so it didn’t seem appropriate anyway. All I did was give her a big hug and whisper in her ear: “I can’t give a speech, but you know what you mean to me”.

Katy would easily be in the top ten people I have ever employed in my thirty year career and I can’t speak more highly of her than that. Thank you Katy for your time with us, your brilliant work, and above all your friendship. And of course the dirty jokes. It’s been a blast.

PS You can read Katy’s own version of her time at Biteback in her valedictory blogpost HERE