IT WAS always an unsettling experience.

Telling professional writers that we would give them a much-needed break so we could unearth some local talent.

But for the past five years, we have invited our readers to compose their own columns to replace – for two weeks only – the finely-crafted prose served up as a smorgasbord of wit and wisdom by our team of professional scribes.

I’m A Columnist, Get Me In There... is your chance to come up with something that sparkles enough for it to earn its own page in the Echo.

The prize? Money cannot buy this sort of fame, but we’ll even throw in lunch with my good self and my team.

In the past, you’ve written in your hundreds, aching for the opportunity to take over from our regular contributors.

You’ve written about your lives, your loves, but mostly about your hates.

You’ve waxed lyrical about your children, your pets, your cars, your houses and, in one spectacular case, your pet snail.

You were scathing, sympathetic, heartless and, quite often, very funny.

And, in the case of one person who shall remain anonymous, you took the opportunity to spend 450 words criticising the weekly efforts of the chief judge of the competition. Namely me.

Somewhere in today’s paper, you’ll find all the details about how you can enter the competition and over the coming weeks, I’m looking forward to whittling down the hundreds we usually receive to the main contenders who will eventually be chosen to feature in the Echo.

I am, rather sadly I feel, unbribable.

But please be aware that the critic who did take me on never saw the light of day.