Six degrees of separation is the theory that any one person is only a maximum of six steps away from another person. With a little bit of wit and imagination you can connect any two people up in the world. It’s an idea that was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and later popularised by a play written by John Guare. Thanks to this smart arse we can now all sleep better at night knowing we’re only six steps away from Jeremy Hunt, Jeremy Beadle and Jerry Springer. Hmm.

The LeftLion ethos is that everything stems from Nottingham. If Hilary Mantel passed through and stopped off to fill her car up with petrol then we have a legitimate right to call her our own. With this in mind I came up with a new feature called Six Degrees of Strellyation (took a lot of thought that did). In addition to linking every living writer with Nottingham it’s also been a good excuse to research as many pointless facts as possible about this relatively unknown village in Nottingham.

It’s been more difficult than I imagined as there really isn’t much written about Strelley. But I’ve started to uncover a few gems that will be woven into the feature over the next couple of months. In many ways the feature typifies journalism as it’s all down to a tenuous selection of facts to fit the story you have in mind. Wasting endless hours researching useless trivia is also a key skill of the trade which is strangely addictive. If you think you should be doing something more interesting then you’re either in the wrong profession or writing for the wrong paper.