Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt and our fascination with crime

Martin Brunt, crime correspondent for Sky News, offers some of the answers in his new book No One Got Cracked Over the Head for No Reason (published by Biteback), a look back over his life in crime. Martin, who lives near Horsham, said: “I have been a crime reporter for the best part of 35 years, not my whole career. I came to it after a few years of general reporting and I stayed with it. I found it very interesting. I knew people that could give me stories, police officers, lawyers, people in courts, and so in a sense I turned to crime... and I'm looking forward to the next 30 years of doing it.” Alongside Kay Burley and a few behind the scenes people Martin is among the handful of people who have been at Sky right from the very start: “I was one of half a dozen Fleet Street hacks that were recruited to help launch Sky. Nobody knew how it was going to work and they couldn't get any TV reporters so they brought in people like me.”

And now the book is the natural next step: “When I regale people with the latest story that I've been covering, very often people will say you should write a book. And I didn't really think about it because it's quite an erratic job, and finding time to write it I just didn't think was doable but when I looked back and thought about the places I've been and the people I've met and the stories I've covered over the past 30 odd years, then I did start to think if people in the business are interested in the stories then probably other people would be too.” And of course there is a massive interest in crime: “The interest in true crime is just phenomenal. The idea behind the book is just to give people an idea of what being a crime reporter means. It's a fantastic job. But the publishers also wanted me to explore this fascination with crime. I think part of the fascination is that people think that crime is something that happens to other people. If you think about what happens on the motorway when there's a car crash and people slow down and stop and look, those people are thinking ‘poor you, I'm glad that's not me.’” But you can also find deeper explanations: “Some people would say that it's about the survival instinct in us. The human race needs to find various ways to survive and one of the ways of surviving is to understand how violent crime happens so that it doesn't happen to you and in that way the human race continues.” But inevitably there are certain stories that resonate far more than others, the death of Nicola Bulley earlier this year, for instance.” Strictly speaking, of course, it was not a crime story though essentially it was because there was a massive police involvement but I think why it resonated so much was that here was this woman who was doing something very ordinary. Her ordinariness attracted people. She disappeared in very normal circumstances and a lot of people could identify with this attractive middle-aged woman that was just doing very ordinary things when she went missing.” Another story which resonated hugely – and has particularly stayed with Martin – was the Sarah Payne murder in West Sussex in the summer of 2000: “Again she disappeared in what seemed very normal circumstances. She ran into a country lane and she vanished, and we've all played in fields.

"I have never been the victim of serious crime. I have been thumped a couple of times, not seriously and I just took it on the chin, but I'm quite lucky that I can compartmentalise the stories I cover. They are my job. I just have a very focused mind but if any story has really affected me over the years then I would say it was the Sarah Payne murder because my own daughter was about the same age and it happened during the summer holidays. Instead of going to London every day I had the lovely drive down to Littlehampton where I'd walk on the beach and this whole story happened in beautiful weather in a beautiful landscape and I just felt grateful that I was reporting it and not a victim of it.”