Hello and one to the Red Box Politics Podcast from The Times, I'm Matt Chorley.

The first time I went for a walk in the park, it was with Anna Subrie, who'd just walked out of the Tory party.

The second time I went for a walk with Ian Austin, who just walked out of the Labour Party.

Today I go for a walk in the park and the sunshine with Sam Coates, who this week walks out of the Times after almost two decades working for the paper.

Hello Sam. Hello, Sam, so it's a beautiful day in St James's Park. So Sam you join the times in the year 2000.

Seems like a long time ago. Explain how that happened.

Well I was lucky enough to be on their graduate training scheme.

All I wanted to do all the way through university

was become a journalist.

So I was lucky enough to walk out

and walk into the Times Graduate Training Scheme, where almost immediately I knew

that I wanted to work in politics. It took me three or four years to get there. 2005 was the

year I moved to Westminster, but I pretty much from the off knew that it was

Westminster journalism for the times that I wanted to do.

And you've been in Westminster ever since apart from a small foray over into banking.

Did your time in banking only reconfirm how much

you wanted to be in West fitster? Well not really. Nobody ever believes me when I

say this but I really enjoyed my time covering the city, covering big companies, covering the Bank of

England, covering the Treasury and covering the way that these massive lobbying institutions,

which our banks operate.

And oddly enough, politics is very serious when it comes to the banking industry

in 2012 when I did it in fact the financial sector was sort of teetering on the edge

...