It's interesting to wake up at 3 in the morning by someone saying they're a reporter and they want to know how you feel. I felt fine but I said 'Well why do you ask?'

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.

For example I spent a lot of time with Reagan both before he ran for governor and when he was running for president. As a print reporter without the cameras I was able to really test the quality of their minds and their knowledge base.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth he threatens our life with his lies.

A reporter's ability to keep the bond of confidentiality often enables him to learn the hidden or secret aspects of government.

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.