Kirsty Bosley: It's only words, but what we say can have a big impact

Despite this, I still left with a decent degree, and this week I was invited back to give a guest lecture as part of Staffordshire University's ace job fair. In it, a number of successful journalists and ex-students were invited to give talks about how they'd made their careers work. And I was asked along too, though I'm thinking it was for comic relief because of how 'by the seat of my drawers' I've flown in the years post-uni.

When I bowled up, I realised that as always, I was ill prepared. I sat and watched two other journalists deliver brilliant talks to the theatre of students, complete with PowerPoint presentations.

With each brilliantly empowering and knowledgeable word they spoke, I began to sink lower into the chair. It was like a snapshot of myself from years before, hungover and hiding away while a public affairs lecturer taught us about local government.

I didn't have a presentation. I was equipped with a shorthand notebook and two or three scribbles about how I managed to get my role as a columnist. 'Random exchanges on Twitter' and 'really nice editors that gave me a chance' was about the crux of it. Not much to fill a half an hour chat and, as the much more switched-on audience of final year students looked on, I took to the stand like a clearly guilty criminal.

I didn't make a brilliant first impression. Some guys got up to leave (it'd been a long day of lectures and I had arrived at the tail end of it). I shouted at them for dissing me. "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" I scolded. "DON'T LEAVE!"

They left anyway and I didn't know what to do with myself. So I did what I've done best for the past 28 years – I winged it. After blabbering on for half an hour, I concluded with a very important lesson ('don't be a d**k') and left to a polite smattering of applause.

On the way home, my phone began to tinkle with notifications. "Your speech was awesome today!" one music writer said. "You're my spirit animal!" she continued. I was half chuffed, and half baffled. I decided I was going to take it as a compliment, though, as I need the validation.

More tweets came in. One girl said: "@Bozzers teaching everyone to be a Phoebe in a world of Rachel's has made my day!" and again, I didn't know how to feel but decided to bag it as another compliment even though Phoebe clearly isn't right.

A young man tweeted to say that he wanted to marry me, which was my favourite response of the day. And as more students sent me messages to say that I'd given them hope or that my talk had been 'useful', I started to really think about the experience now that the terror had subsided.

It's strange just how influential the words we utter can be – both those we've put tons of effort into creating and those we pop off the tip of our tongues in unscripted moments. Both the bad and the good. Sure, there are plenty of students that might have taken nothing away from my lecture, or who thought I was too Phoebe to be taken seriously. But others had clearly been motivated enough by a word or two from someone who wasn't that far removed from where they are now to get in touch.

And, as these things so often do in my brain, the positivity that I took from this reminded me of something terrible.

Just a week or so earlier, I'd heard of the furore that came about after one of my favourite vocalists of all time was caught on camera spreading hateful messages.

Phil Anselmo, singer of 90s metal band Pantera, had been performing at a festival when he raised his arms in a sieg heil salute. Now Pantera have been a source of great enjoyment, entertainment and empowerment for me over the years. Normal empowerment, I might add. I didn't know of Phil's miserable political standing until now. While it doesn't take anything away from his band's exceptional musical output back in their time of operation, it does reduce any respect I had for this man to dust.

My love for Pantera is so strong, in fact, that I have lyrics written by Phil tattooed on my feet. UNSCARRED BY TRIALS it reads, a message of strength and positivity for every time I looked down. The messages in songs like A New Level and Strength Beyond Strength were pretty influential for me as a disaffected young person – their work meant, and still means, a great deal to me. Part of me hoped it was a mistake, that he hadn't said or done such things. But the footage, and the apology that followed, confirmed it to be true.

I was gutted – I was upset that he'd compromised their legacy, and I wasn't the only one desperately disappointed in him. The metal community, including bands that had played with Pantera and Phil's other musical endeavours too, spoke up against his actions.

They shared in my anger and upset, condemning his actions and the spreading of such vile hate. The French government withdrew a huge amount of money from festival Hellfest because the organisers refused to remove Phil's band Down from the bill.

The fallout from the stupid actions of Phil Anselmo have really made me stop and think about just how powerful and potentially disastrous words can be. He's one person, and his spoken words over the years have both delighted and disgusted me in equal measure – from one extreme to the other.

Though my words are nowhere near as influential as his, I'm aware that what we say can have an impact, on both a big and small scale. Everything we say should be closely considered and measured before we say them, especially when we're in positions of influence as parents, friends, teachers or just guest lecturers for half an hour.