An ex-journo colleague tells me hacks don’t like sterile working conditions. They hate the silence of the office and the fact that PRs collude in that silence by doing everything by email or Twitter.

Apparently, some PRs actually try to drive more conversations onto email. One journalist, I shall refer to him only as Pint of Guinness, outlined his biggest gripe with modern PRs. “After I’d spent two minutes explaining something to this girl, she asked me to type it all out in an email for her.”

Even as a junior PR I knew what many agencies now still don’t realise: Journalists hate follow up calls. You’re only useful if you’re helping them do their work. If you stop them, to make them help you with your admin, they’ll soon learn to cut you out the loop. So my first ever PR job was nearly lost over a huge row over follow-ups with journalists.