BREAKING FREELANCE

At the weekend, I spent 24 fascinating hours in London Town. On the Saturday night, it was dinner with old (and one new, lovely) journo friends from three continents. We covered pretty much everything you might name, much spiced by one of our number being able to move at will inside the DC beltway. This is what connections are for.

Sunday was spent at The Guardian, attending a so-called Masterclass on The Essentials of Freelance Journalism. Now, I've been a freelance journo for more than 40 years (longer than any of the day's four speakers has been alive) but I haven't placed a piece in more years than I care to count so I figure that ... er ... You're Never Too Old to Learn. I went prepared to be the speccy kid at the front, putting his hand up at every verse end and being utterly obnoxious. My opening line was going to be that I felt like Matt Dillon in Wayward Pines. Probably just as well that I didn't get to use it. The speakers were all quick-witted and sympathetic, though all cut from the same cloth: wry, self-deprecating, self-congratulatorily giggly, unpretentious. Their argot is the one that now dominates journalism and television presentation: banter. If you don't do banter, you can kiss goodbye to a career.

This is bitter aloes to me. The first speaker, Stuart Heritage, had a piece in G2 the other day, followed by another piece by Ian Martin. Both were about Jeremy Corbyn, both were crippled by their jokes shouldering each other out of the way, and Martin's went second because his jokes were that much more outré and gratuitous. I longed for something about Corbyn that I could engage with. I guess I'll have to offer it to G2.

Still, there was a lot of good stuff passed on. I amassed a mass of details that I didn't know or hadn't considered or had overlooked. I feel newly armed for the battle. And for £129 (including a decent lunch and continuous tea/coffee) it wasn't bad value – some of the plusher Masterclasses charge in the high four figures. This is a smart service for The Guardian to offer and also a useful one. Of course, as always, I march away newly determined and within two days the rest of life has crowded in and good intentions fall behind old habits. Perhaps I'll write myself a note.