I must admit, when Dan Roan accepted my offer to be interviewed, I was nothing short of thrilled. Roan, a Varsity sports writer come good, is certainly an inspiration for any aspiring journalist such as myself. Familiar to anyone who watches the BBC’s national news programmes, the former Cambridge graduate has gone on to cover some of the world’s greatest sporting events, including three FIFA World Cups and the London 2012 Olympics, as well as enhancing his reputation as a prominent interviewer, posing tough questions to the likes of Sepp Blatter, Bernie Ecclestone and of course, most recently, to disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong in an enthralling encounter.

Having grown up in Northampton, a city he describes as having an “underrated sporting tradition”, especially with respect to their rugby and cricket clubs, Roan, 38, graduated from Fitzwilliam College in 1998 with a degree in Social and Political Sciences (now HSPS). During his time at Cambridge, he was involved heavily with the Union and this newspaper, and overall, despite the intense workload, he looks back at his time at university fondly.

“I worked so hard when I was there. I wasn’t one of those guys you meet at Cambridge who it all comes naturally to, who effortlessly get through their course.

“But I was into my sport, a lot. I played football for the college, and that was so important to me.”

Roan was also Press Officer at the Union, and this, combined with his work for Varsity, were particularly influential. “Writing for Varsity honed my passion for journalism, getting my head around what it took, discovering how much I enjoyed it and the thrill that comes with breaking stories, writing the news and getting your work published.”

His job at the Union was to generate some noise in the papers and on television at a time when the organisation’s profile and reputation were way behind Oxford’s. “I got a bit of a buzz out of it, both the PR of it and equally the coverage.” Often, he would use the role to get interviews for Varsity, a way he could combine his work with both.

Roan remembers his excitement when boxers Prince Naseem and Chris Eubank visited the Union, accompanied on both occasions by an entourage of journalists. But a memory of one speaker particularly stands out.

“The biggest single factor was when John Simpson came one day. I met him, interviewed him, and wrote to him afterwards and asked for work experience and he said yeah.

“I went along, I spent a few weeks there in the world affairs unit at the BBC, at the television centre, and I met all the big names, Ben Brown, Sue Lloyd-Roberts. It fascinated me.

“A few weeks later, his first book came out, it was called Strange Places, Questionable People, his first big autobiography. I looked at it while walking through Cambridge one day and on page 8, I had to double take – there was my name, he’d mentioned and thanked me in the preface.

“To be mentioned in his book gave me the inspiration I needed to believe that this could be done.”

From Cambridge, Roan successfully applied for a BBC Trainee Scheme, attaining one of eight places out of thousands of applicants. “That’s where I feel I owe Cambridge and Fitzwilliam a huge debt, because I suspect without that, I wouldn’t have made it, or at least it would have been a lot harder.”

After the Trainee Scheme, Roan worked as a producer for BBC Look North and BBC Breakfast before joining Sky Sports News in 2003, having narrowly missed out on a place at Sky News. Within weeks he was given the chance to broadcast live, something that he’d never had the chance to do before.

“Every time I got an opportunity, I thought, I’ve got to make this count.”

“It was a much more meritocratic place because it was a smaller, upcoming channel, and they were desperate for people to grab opportunities and prove their worth whereas at the BBC I’d been waiting for years. At Sky I was given the chance to prove myself and when I did, I was rewarded with more opportunities.”

Roan certainly made an impression because, in 2007, he was appointed Chief News Reporter.

But it’s not all been plain sailing. A year after his appointment, Roan decided to join Setanta on a four year contract, but nine months later, he was made redundant when Setanta GB collapsed.

“I went from being Chief News Reporter, a great job, very lucky, really happy, to being out of work wondering what on earth had I done, with a wife and a mortgage and everything else.”

“If you’d said to me then that I’d be Sports Editor at the BBC. I would have said ‘You’re nuts, it’s simply impossible. I’ve got to start all over again.’”

But Roan did just that. Two years after the Setanta collapse, he would return to the BBC as a Sports Correspondent, and in 2014, he was made Sports Editor.

“It’s been an 11 year journey from when I left. When I was made editor the people who I’d worked with before could not believe this was possible.”

Throughout his career, Roan has conducted many memorable, but often tricky, interviews. I ask him about one such interview, with Patrick Vieira in 2012, that led to him being banned from the Etihad stadium.

“They don’t happen very often!” he quickly clarifies. “But I learnt from that. No one likes to get banned. Football clubs are very protective, they’re increasingly reluctant to answer difficult questions.

“You have to ask difficult questions, you can’t be afraid of that even if you clash with those that you’re interviewing. I’d like to think that if you ask decent questions in a polite manner, you can usually be okay.”

Roan has certainly encountered some challenging characters. You only have to watch his remarkable world exclusive with Lance Armstrong two weeks ago as a perfect example. That interview, which at the time he was unable to tell me about, was the hardest he’d ever had to do. But amongst the toughest interviewees, including a tight-lipped post-bribery trial Bernie Ecclestone, Roan singles out Sir Alex Ferguson, who he describes as “not used to journalists standing up to him.” But for Roan, it is those challenges that he relishes.

“It’s what makes the job fun,” he says.

Besides his interviews, Roan has covered a plethora of leading global sports events. He was in Brazil last year for the football world cup, the third he has now covered. He has also followed the Lions tour of Australia, the Ashes test Down Under as well as the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.

He was also at the heart of the BBC’s coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games, something he described as “amazing to experience”. But he points out that his experience was very different to those sitting at home or relaxing in the stands.

“You’re so immersed in it, up early, bed late, the work is so intense, and you’re working for such tight deadlines. Your report has to be there for the six or ten o’clock news. Even if it’s about an event that has literally just finished and you have minutes to turn it around.

“But when you do get to experience it, it’s ‘wow, I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be here.’”

His job has allowed him to travel to places that he’d never thought he’d be able to visit, such as Brazil for the World Cup, an event which he described as the single greatest event he’d ever covered. “It was romantic” he said, “you had good underdogs, you had Suarez, you had the 7-1, you had the right winner, it had everything.”

Travelling, of course, does take its toll on family life. Roan describes how he has missed all three of his son’s birthdays.

“It’s not great,” he says. “You can never say with any certainty that you’ll be there. If something happens, all your plans go out of the window.

“It’s a very unpredictable life, and you have to learn to roll with that, but my wife is very understanding.”

It is evident, speaking to Roan, that sport is not just about the winners and losers. For him, it is about the stories. Brazil, of course, saw widespread social unrest and huge protests over the World Cup.

He speaks of the scandals unfolding during the last Ashes test down under, England’s “Stag do” Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, as well as highlighting the remarkable stories of the likes of Oscar Pistorious which captivate the public consciousness.

“Sport, it inspires, it’s escapism, it’s drama, it’s triumph over adversity, it’s victory and defeat and great personal stories. But it’s also about politics, business, society and law and crime and legacy, the ethics and integrity. But on top of all these things it matters. Sport can move people like no other area of life.”

2015 promises to be another great year of sport. The Rugby World Cup, which will be held in England, particularly stands out. Can England win it? “Well they should win it, with home advantage, and they’ve got more players to pick from than anybody else,” he argues.

“But they’re still in the cycle of development. This World Cup has come a couple of years too early for Lancaster than where he’d ideally want it to.

“They’ve got a chance, a real chance, but there’s also a chance they’ll go out in the group stages.

“It’s New Zealand or South Africa for me.”

As the conversation draws to a close, I ask him about the future of journalism as an evolving, increasingly online, industry. “I can’t imagine life without Twitter,” he says, and he particularly praises the advantages of social media, especially as a “news wire” where you can find out information first.

The variety of platforms from which you can tell stories, from the short and sweet nature of a tweet to a three minute news bulletin to a copious blog entry, are all areas that Roan enjoys about the digital age. But at the same time, while believing that newspapers will prove to be resilient to the online switch in the same way that books have responded, he shares his concerns over what he terms a “tendency in recent times, wrongly, to keep things quite simple, that it promotes the trivial over the in-depth.”

“I love the great sports documentaries, sports novels and sports books, I hope there will be a fight-back of more in depth sports journalism going forward, even though it’s online.”

As we move towards a digital age in journalism, an increasing online focus and a desire for more information on the move, one thing we can be sure of is that great sport, and great stories, will continue. For Roan, having the opportunities to tell these stories is a “tremendous privilege”.

“It’s challenging, but it’s worth it. No doubt about it.”