Column: Clinton Rogers on the demise of the Saturday job

Lessons like dealing with unjust working practices as a 14-year-old blackcurrant picker.

Handling money – and customers who won’t pay – running my own paper round business, aged 15.

And health and safety, working in a slaughterhouse, aged 14.

I’m a great fan of Vernon Kay on Radio 2, and he took me back 50 plus years when talking about the "demise of the Saturday job" and how today’s teenagers are losing out because of it.

From my own personal experience, he has a very valid point.

Gently cajoling customers (sometimes not so gently!), who were weeks behind, to pay for their Sunday newspapers gives you valuable negotiating skills, not to mention the ability to count.

Mine wasn’t a normal paper round.

I had a customer base of my own, and I bought the Sunday papers from a wholesaler and then sold them at the cover price.

Self-employed, aged 15.

A year before that, I used to regularly pick blackcurrants on a local farm with a group of friends.

That’s where I encountered unjust bosses.

As kids, we were always sent to rows of bushes that had already been picked by adults, so not much fruit left.

It didn’t take us long to come up with a plan to right the wrong.

We would sneak into the adults’ rows and, while they weren’t looking, take fruit from their buckets and drop it into ours.

We called it 'wealth redistribution'.

As a weekend meat delivery boy, I came across slaughterhouse practices that would probably be outlawed today.

The slaughterhouse was right behind the town centre butcher’s shop, and that’s where they kept my bike.

So, every week, I would need to collect the bike and wheel it over the carcasses of dead sheep to start my rounds.

At the time, I really don’t think it bothered me.

And, to the best of my knowledge, no customers died!

Most people of my generation had similar jobs.

Vernon Kay told his listeners he had a weekend job in a banana-packing factory – six hours, starting at 6am.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says he was 14 when he got a part-time job clearing stones from a farmer’s field.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was waitressing in an Essex pub from the age of 15.

Of course, times have changed.

Tighter regulations make it difficult for employers to take on teenagers under the age of 16.

There are certainly fewer paper rounds these days, and I’m not sure anyone delivers meat on a bike any more.

But that’s a shame.

Youth unemployment is higher than it’s been for a decade.

And an early age CV, with proof of life lessons learned, would stand you in good stead with a potential employer.