An ex-journo colleague tells me hacks don’t like sterile working conditions. They hate the silence of the office and the fact that PRs collude in that silence by doing everything by email or Twitter.

Apparently, some PRs actually try to drive more conversations onto email. One journalist, I shall refer to him only as Pint of Guinness, outlined his biggest gripe with modern PRs. “After I’d spent two minutes explaining something to this girl, she asked me to type it all out in an email for her.”

As it’s a Friday I thought I’d share this little gem with you. I spend months every year media training company spokespeople for what might be that one moment where they get their chance to shine on television or the radio.

Over the past few months I’ve begun to notice something sinister in some of the social media training sessions I’ve been giving. No, it’s not Gollum sitting in the corner, but something far worse. In fact, if left unchecked it threatens to ruin the public face of some of the larger corporates we know. Indeed, it appears the F-Factor is spreading through firms like bindweed and choking their creativity.

That’s one of my favourite pieces of dialogue. And I didn’t hear it at the recent premier of The Iron Lady. My invitation to this auspicious event obviously got lost in the post.

Following my recent piece for PRmoment.com on the ‘Ten PR sins you must not commit’, I received countless emails and tweets from the PR community and juniors in particular. While it was great to know people felt so strongly about the pressure of cold calling journalists, I felt rather sad and slightly appalled by the sheer volume of responses confirming this still takes place.

When Rick Perry took to the floor for the recent televised presidential debates in the US few could have imagined the spectacular self-destruction that would occur live, on air, in front of the world’s media.

Shows and exhibitions have come and gone over the past 20 years. Some are impossibly popular and extremely expensive while others offer far better value for money. But the fact remains the same: unless you happen to be Apple launching the iPhone 5, do not bother announcing anything at events. It will simply get sucked into the noise and sink to the bottom of the news pool.

PR: Hello. We’d like you to travel to a briefing. Don’t worry, we’ll pay your train or plane fare as our client wants to meet you face-to-face. We want to talk to you about how videoconferencing does away with the need for expensive travel, saves you time and money and…hello?? Oh…He's gone.

Even as a junior PR I knew what many agencies now still don’t realise: Journalists hate follow up calls. You’re only useful if you’re helping them do their work. If you stop them, to make them help you with your admin, they’ll soon learn to cut you out the loop. So my first ever PR job was nearly lost over a huge row over follow-ups with journalists.

It seems that releases concerning new appointments are being written in a kind of retarded shorthand, drawn from the same bucket of words to gloss over flaws, dehumanise the people involved and make a potentially interesting story as standardised and dull as possible.

Companies contradict themselves. In fact communications companies are often the worst at communicating. Especially the telecoms people.

Similarly, IT companies always boast that they are about agility, reacting quickly and empowering their staff to make decisions. Then they panic if a journalist even asks them for their name, job title or a photograph. Either that or they send out a hapless untrained engineer to do a 'tech' interview.

Sport is so regularly used as a metaphor for business that I’m surprised telecoms regulators haven’t tried to devise an offside rule. Being American, many of the sports analogies used don’t stand up in Europe although I’ve seen many a journalist who relishes the chance to ‘step up to the plate.’ Conference rule number One: Never feed the press until after the interview. If you can manage it, keep us hungry until we've filed our stories…

Ed Miliband’s had a good scandal hasn’t he? Despite the fact that he was the political advisor to Gordon Brown for 13 years, he’s emerged as some kind of guardian of high standards in public life in the last few days. Which is quite an achievement, given the number of News International social events he and Gordon Brown frequented.

People keep asking whether Stuart Downing is really worth £20 million. Who knows? Surely they’re missing the point anyway.

Any commodity is only worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it. So, if someone is prepared to pay half a million quid for a studio flat in Penge, then it’s worth that much, no matter how unacceptable this is to the local property market expert who missed out on the commission.