IT’S 1 A.M. IN THE Groucho and I am still seething. Not only did Lorimer spike my story, but the news desk rang me three hours ago with what felt like gratuitous provocation. The first edition of the Globe had dropped. Wilkinson splashed with the disclosure that Ramsey will announce the election on Monday. I reckon what put him on to it was my swaggering claim in the Pol Eds’ huddle. It’s irritating. Why do I have to show off?

‘That was my story,’ I say to Jess, for the fifth time. Why on earth didn’t I write it? A story is a story, even if acquired at a family funeral.

‘For God’s sake, stop it,’ she says. ‘So you let one go. So what?’

‘Sorry,’ I say, sinking the rest of the Chablis in my glass. ‘It’s not even a real scoop. Everyone knew the timetable. Wilkinson just tarted it up with a couple of quotes.’

This is ungenerous. The game is the game. Scoops aren’t just about revealing something that no one has thought of. They’re partly about show business, about taking something that may already be in the ether and then writing about it with certainty and with a context that gives it authority and oomph. Wilkinson put the ball in the net. I’m off my game.

‘What a flippin’ awful day.’ I look wistfully at the empty bottle. ‘Our pensions story is spiked, and Wilkinson gets the front page with reheated gossip.’

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ I notice, not for the first time, that her attention is focused somewhere to my right.

‘Found a better offer?’

‘A different kind of tosser. Alex Elliott’s over there.’

I turn round as discreetly as I can, which is to say drunkenly and clumsily. Alex Elliott is the public relations head at Media Corp, an Old Etonian with ruddy, fleshy cheeks and dark brown hair too long at the front, like an extra from Four Weddings and a Funeral. His manner is hail-fellow-well-met, a disguise for his ruthless calculation.

‘Let’s go over,’ says Jess.

‘It’s come to this? You prefer Elliott’s company to mine.’

She sighs. ‘Strictly business. There’s a tip off I want to put to him. Also, he’s buying a proper drink.’

I clock the two-hundred-quid-a-bottle Krug Champagne in an ice bucket on his table, which we’ll be happy to guzzle all night if a PR prick is paying. Jess and I are members of a dwindling band of hacks who resist the temptation to go through the looking glass into public relations. We prefer our mission of embarrassing the rich and powerful to manipulating the media and public opinion on their behalf. Even so, it’s hard not to have expense account envy.

We saunter over. ‘Wotcha, Elliott.’