When I arrived straight from Cambridge at the gentlemen’s club that was the Manchester office of the Guardian in 1964, I was inducted into the mysteries of each department. It fell to Mike McNay to take me to watch the printers construct the next day’s paper.

Over and over he emphasised that on no account should I lay so much as a finger on the type. Impatiently I agreed: of course, I wasn’t stupid. But inevitably I couldn’t resist pointing out that if they just moved that slab there … The print room froze.

Mike made it very plain that my bleating apologies were of no help at all. It took him a great deal of hard talking to save the night. And, kind man, he never alluded to it again.