Community service

Further to the below, my own ‘suit and tie’ story concerns a freebie I’d sorted for a collection of our subs and reporters at a local boxing night. The sports centre where the fights were to be held was in the roughest possible part of town, so the rendezvous was, inevitably, one of the roughest pubs in town.

As ever, we were late, fleeing the office at the last minute after seeing off our last overnights, and hurtled into the pub in a hurry to get a couple of sharpeners down before kick-off. This had an unexpected effect on the clientele.

Seeing a dozen chaps in trenchcoats, suits and ties suddenly burst through the door caused them to rush as a man to the bogs, where they quickly flushed their illicit drugs stashes down the toilet.

It won’t surprise you to learn that after our real identity had been established, we didn’t stay for a second. Still, we did our bit for the community that night.