'I met Alex Westwood - this week's verdict was stark reminder to us all'
I spent three months training on a TV course with convicted sex offender Alex Westwood - finding out the truth about him made my stomach turn.
At the start of this year - long before I joined the Express & Star team - I was exploring options for the future of my journalism career and decided to get some training in a platform I'd actively avoided since my undergraduate days.
I bit the bullet to get over my fear of the bright lights and cameras of a TV studio - but little did I know the kind of lesson I would learn as a result.
The first time I met Alexander Westwood he introduced himself as an actor and explained that he was there to explore producing his own work. Seemed reasonable.
However, over the coming weeks, I came to find out just how astoundingly arrogant he was.
He would tell people about roles he has apparently been in the running to get - that seemed way out of the paygrade of someone who was merely an extra on Netflix's Sex Education (although, I'm sure his ego has been fed into by headlines branding him a "star" of the show).
On a production day, the team had him in Joker makeup (very apt for someone so clearly disturbed) for a dress rehearsal before our actors arrived the next day. But the 24-year-old, from Albrighton, also complained that the production we trained on was "amateur" - well, yes, it's a training course Alex. If you were that much of a professional, why were you there?
