We’ve seen a lot of articles on OS recently on the demise of papers and on the impact to journalists. Personally, speaking as a journalist, I’d like to point out two important facts. The first is that the demise of local papers will lead to an increase in corruption, as local sleazebags feel the beady eye of local hacks lifted off them.

The second point is that where are all the fruitcakes going to go if they can’t work in a newsroom?

I’ve worked in a fascinating cross-section of newsrooms since I started as a journalist in 1994. The journalist students I studied with didn’t seem too bad. Then I started my first job and that wasn’t too bad either. Ok, so my boss was a compulsive gambler who I later discovered had once been a millionaire before he lost 99.9% of it, but he was a nice guy.

Then there was the newsroom at the TV production company I used to work for – which was bedlam. People were constantly shouting down telephones, mostly to make themselves heard above the sound of other people shouting down their own phones. It was one of the few places I’ve ever been glad of being half-deaf.

But the TV newsroom was a cradle of sanity compared to the other places I subsequently worked at. The first was a local newspaper in North London that had a number of subsidiaries, including three based out of an office in the town of Epping in Essex. This was a 20-minute drive from home, through Epping Forest, a place that contains two Iron Age hillforts, stunning scenery and lots of bomb craters dating from 1939-1945 (a combination of the blackout and fake lights meant that the forest got its share of attention from the Luftwaffe. For years after the war there would be the odd explosion as curious dogs/foxes/squirrels had terminal lessons about what not to sniff).

It was a schizophrenic office in that it had two rooms, the nice one and the nasty one. As I was freelancing for the company I tended to go where they sent me, one paper one week, another the next week, so I would work for different bosses. The nice room contained an editor who I will name Footie Freak, as she was a mad Arsenal supporter. Footie Freak was friendly, helpful, intelligent and listened to my madder ideas for stories. She was a pleasure to work with, except when she talked about football.

 The nasty room was the domain of the Mutterer. He was, strictly speaking, the senior editor. He was also a total lunatic. I’m not sure if he had a low-grade version of Tourette’s or something, but everything he said was followed by a muttered appendix of his personal thoughts.

A typical conversation would go something like this:

“Have you got that article on the RSPB meeting? (bloody bird-watching bastards)”

“Yes, I’m filing it now.”

“Good (should have filed it five minutes ago, lazy git).”

“I’m just fixing a typo – it’s the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, not Preservation.”

“Ok, let me know when it’s in (he can’t even get that right).”

It was like working under a permanent cloud of muttered criticism. Unsurprisingly the nasty room had a high turnover of journalists.

But the place where the real nuts rolled around was the main newsroom of the group. There was the sports editor who communicated entirely in grunts and post-it notes, the film critic whose existence I doubted as he was never at his desk, and the editor with an obsession with talking about growing potatoes.

The only relatively normal bloke was the chief sub-editor, who I will dub Red Pencil – as that was what he used to correct copy. He was a friendly bloke with a beard and glasses who I could talk to about history and politics. He was an oasis of sanity.

One night I was sprawled out in my favourite chair in the lounge, with a book in my hands and a cold beer on the table, when the phone rang. My mother happened to be passing it and I heard her answer it. A moment later she stuck her heard around the door and told me that Footie Freak was on the line.

As it was about 10pm at night my eyebrows shot up at this – I’d never been contacted by anyone from the company this late after work hours and I wondered what the hell was going on. I strode to the phone and asked her if anything was wrong. What I got back was a noise that resembled a hyperventilating smurf on helium.

After about thirty seconds or so of this noise I was able to calm her down enough to tell me what was going on, whereupon she gasped something about how I had to turn the TV to Channel 4 and then she put the phone down.

I literally stared at the receiver for a moment and then I went back into the lounge, turned the TV on and turned it to Channel 4. Hmmm, interesting. It was a programme about S&M fetishists. Why was the woman I sometimes worked for telling me to watch this? It was at this point that the screen switched from a large woman wearing a lot of leather and feathers to the press officer of the S&M Club of Great Britain. He was wearing a black shirt that looked like silk. He was wearing the kind of mask around the eyes that had put me off US comics at an early age as they looked to be totally useless at concealing the identity of a superhero. He had a black leather briefcase that contained what he identified as his favourite pair of handcuffs. Oh and he had a beard. And glasses.

Yes, you’ve guessed it, it was Red Pencil.