On my last day of work before moving to a new job, toward the end of a night-shift which ended in the really busy newsroom of BBC World Service, I was publicly accused by a particularly nasty editor of being half an hour late back from a meal break.

News people can be very abrupt and everything is urgent to them, but I wasn't late, and it really upset me, particularly as this was my last ever shift and I wanted to leave on a high. But this was “his” domain I was working in - he was at the head of the big news table with his team of colleagues around him, an impressive collection of about a dozen phones (the push button type with curly leads and handsets) in a big group in the middle, and important piles of paper, working towards the final news broadcast of the night - and it wouldn't have been constructive to argue the point with him in front of his colleagues.

So when the last broadcast finished, which ended my shift (and my last working day there), while he and his colleagues went off for a coffee, on the way out I stopped by the group of phones on the big news table, methodically lifted up all the phone receivers, and replaced them on different phones.

Walking to the station in the early morning sunshine, against the tide of grey commuters going to work, I kept imagining the scenario for the next frantic news person trying to either make or receive a call in a hurry, and wondering why they couldn't hear anything on any of the phones. I'm sorry to say I might possibly have cackled to myself like a maniac. It still makes me laugh even now, 30 years later!