Every so often there occur incidents in a columnist’s life which, however brave he feels his editor might be, are unlikely to find welcome repose on the pages of the publication to which he owes his primary loyalty. On those occasions, discretion is the better part of valour: but no journalist likes to see a good yarn unpublished so he resorts to devious methods of publication. Today, we call it The Blog. This is one such example . . . 

  The odd couple struggled, panting, up Parliament Hill. The tubby one, Oscar to his elderly companion’s Felix, hauled two heavy-looking black shoulder bags and poured with sweat as the early morning sun beat down on his bare head…

  And Felix? I knew his true identity in an instant. The careful disguise – baseball cap, tee-shirt, track pants and training shoes – neither flattered nor concealed the regal rotundity of the eminent journalist, broadcasting wit and restaurant critic who returned my cheery “Good morning, Sir Clement!” with a nod and a scowl.

  There was being enacted, I quickly ascertained, an episode of the notorious soap Fleet Street Photo-Shoot and my final fall from grace – major player to mere extra – was about to take place. After all, I might have edited major newspapers on three continents during the past forty years but I had never in all that time been employed as a photographer’s assistant.

  “You doing anything, mate?” enquired the photographer (not Oscar but John, I later learned) as he struggled to cope with not only a grumpily perspiring Clement Freud but also a clutch of cameras, battery pack and hand-held flash. Oh yes, and he also had to compose a photo of the venerable knight with London, shimmering in the heat haze, laid out below him…

  Happily abandoning coffee flask, morning papers and my columnist’s plagiarising search for inspiration amid the work of others, I agreed to be the picture man’s second pair of hands.

  For the next twenty minutes I wore the battery pack with all the élan of ‘The Sun’s Arthur Edwards’ and brandished aloft the flashgun like a regular paparazzo as my camera-carrying ‘boss’ did all the glamour work.

  Plainly, Sir Clement was not pleased to be the subject of so much attention from either the paparazzi or the Hampstead Heath joggerati who, grinning at the scene, loped by with Borzois and St Bernard’s yapping at their heels. Highly embarrassed, he took it out on the hapless photographer.

   “I DO NOT want pictures of my full face!” he thundered darkly. “I don’t DO this sort of thing!” he snorted at the struggling snapper, who nodded his eager agreement to every demand and then proceeded to slyly flout the Great Man’s wishes.

  To me, the snapper’s serf, the courtly knight was all charm:  “I’m doing a Three Peaks Race pastiche for The Times,” he growled, attempting to explain away the bizarre circumstances of our meeting, “only I’m climbing Parliament Hill, Primrose Hill and Muswell Hill,” he added, puckishly. He winked and pointed to a miniature backpack, adding: “Emergency rations and a silver foil survival blanket,”

  John the photographer wheezed as his camera whirred, grateful for the distraction my conversation was providing. “We wanted to do Herne Hill but Clement decided it was a bit too far so we’re doing Muswell instead,” he confided. “It’s closer.”

  Sir Clement was becoming agitated as John lobbied for “just one more, and one more, and just one . . .”

  “I am leaving!” announced the Nobu-loving nobleman suddenly. “I don’t DO photos,” he declared, his bloodhound-sad eyes appealing to me for understanding.

  “Well, give my love to your daughter-in-law,” I toadied.

  “You know Elisabeth?” He eyed me suspiciously.

  “From Australia,” I nodded. “She was very young then. I edited a paper in Sydney for her father [Rupert Murdoch],” I explained.

  Sir Clement warmed slightly. “She and Matthew [his son] are expecting their second,” he enthused, before adding incongruously: “I used to write for the Melbourne Age.” I was abashed: the veteran scribbler had handed me an exclusive and topped my media boast at a single stroke.

  John the lensman, still frenetically snapping as if every moment might be his last, joined the conversation from his one-eyed crouch position.

“You ever get mistaken for that other David Banks?” he asked with a grin. “The one who did the Diana in the Gym pictures in the Mirror?”

  “I AM that other Dave Banks,” I replied as self-importantly as possible.

  “Blimey!” cooed John, “I might have been working for you a few years back.”

  Suddenly, this meeting of media minds on Hampstead Heath was going swimmingly. I asked Sir Clement why he was no longer a fellow columnist of mine at the media magazine, Press Gazette. Hadn’t he written a restaurant review column for his free-spending, gourmandising  fellow hacks?

  “I only contracted to do twelve,” he explained, adding that he believed The Times to be a safer berth. “They’re not making any money at PG,” he added, “not even with the Press Awards after the Mail and the Telegraph refused to take part.”

  “Your son and Piers Morgan will hang in there, though?” I ventured, fearful that my columnar stipend might be prematurely ended by the joint owners’ lack of immediate success.

  But at this, Sir Clement was off, shuffling down the hill towards Hampstead, perhaps alarmed by one Freudian slip too many.

  “Nice talking with you,” he fibbed with a backward wave to me. “And I’ll see YOU at the top of Primrose Hill!” he bellowed at Photographer John, who was desperately packing up his gear as he thanked me for my assistance.

  “He’s a nightmare,” hissed John as he hared off downhill, trailing cables and camera bag straps. “I hope there’s someone like you at the next place!”