I've never been given a company car but I do drive something very special at work. I'm in charge of a “mole”, one of the giant tunnel-digging machines that are burrowing under London for the Crossrail project, linking the east and west of the city. Each mole is as long as 14 London buses and weighs 1,000 tons, yet is incredibly precise. It has to be to cut a path between the capital's subterranean maze of sewers, Tube lines and underground rivers.

I'm 44 and have worked in tunnel digging since I was 16. My uncle ran a boring company and he gave me my first job, on a sewer project under Sheffield. In those days tunnelling was hard labour with shovels and picks. Now I sit at a control panel and it isn't physically demanding at all. I'd rather pick up a rattlesnake than go back to the old way of working.

There have always been plenty of opportunities in my line but because it's underground, people don't always realise. I've helped dig miles of tunnels over the years, including the Channel Tunnel rail link and a tunnel that carries the electrical power supplies underneath the Olympic Village in London.