A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases rather than those who are.

By virtue of some of the ways the game is played in terms of message discipline in terms of access for reporters and especially in the way that sources and subjects especially famous subjects treat the media almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

I believe in equality for everyone except reporters and photographers.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year he said there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad.