I bring news. About 1,000 years ago, when I saw Kate Adie reporting from the collapsing Berlin Wall and told my mum I wanted to be a journalist, she didn't take me seriously.
So she bought me this book as a joke. 
I devoured every word. Every. Single. Word.
There is a section in there on how to be a journalist, and it said a good bluff was to write off to all the newspapers asking to be taken on as a 'stringer' - someone they can call on, but who isn't paid unless they produce something.
The reason for this was that you could later add 'Stringer for Telegraph, Times, Observer, Washington Post' etc to your CV and pretend to be more ace than you were.
If anyone ever checked your CV, the letter would be in the file somewhere and it would be confirmed. You didn't actually need to be published, in other words, to sound like a journo.
I took it very seriously and did exactly as suggested. There had been a recent school trip to see Hamlet in London so I wrote a review, and sent it all off with a cheeky letter.
Several places said thanks but we don't take stringers, and I've still got the letters somewhere. One editor rang me up, told me I was a fabulous writer and asked what I would be doing next.
At this point my bluff collapsed through sheer surprise, and I revealed I was in fact an adolescent and my next work would very much depend on what teacher let me do.
When the editor realised she was speaking to a child she reverse ferreted in a most embarrassed fashion. It didn't matter, I was still chuffed to be taken seriously.
I've now been a paid journalist for almost quarter of a century, and that embarrassed editor is now in charge at @BBCr4today.
Anyway the point of the story is this: @BluffersGuide has just asked me to write the new, updated, whizzy Bluffer's Guide to Journalism!
I have a plan and everything. I am so bloody chuffed at the idea there’ll be a budding cub reporter out there who’ll read it and be as entranced as I was at the idea of being paid to have fun.
I am going to write about how not to die on a doorstep and how to write a splash with a hangover. I know this shit.
And available for pre-order! Lucky you: amazon.co.uk/Bluffers-Guide…
OH AND ANOTHER THING. I get to use my favourite quote about journalism of all time. Perry White to Clark Kent, Superman II: 'If I know Lois Lane, she'll not only come back with a Pulitzer Prize story, she'll have a 1-on-1 interview with the atom bomb titled 'What Makes Me Tick'.'
Which is only narrowly ahead of Perry White 30 seconds earlier: "If Paris goes kablooey I want my best reporter right there in the middle of it." cc @NickBuck
