Secret diary of a choirgirl

It is strange how little I know about the people on my desk after 16 months there (it’s a very heads down, get on with it, don’t look directly in the editor’s eyes affair). Still, you try and glean bits of information when you can

I only found out this week that our version of the Diet Coke man, on the tech support team, is a trained actor trying to break on to the BBC3 comedy scene. The fact he has 5 children by a few different women was less of a surprise - it's the inevitable outcome of looks + humour + coming to the rescue of damsels in distress whose computers have crashed.

I mention this to someone in my department. ‘Oh yes,’ she replies. ‘It took me eight years before I told anyone here that I was gay.’ I look around our corner of the newsroom. ‘I suppose he could be a secret cross dresser,’ I say, nodding my head in the direction of a 6ft bearded Cornish man who looks after the puzzle pages.

‘Hmmmm, and then there’s him…’ she says, looking at another colleague. ‘I know as much about him now as I did when he first started ten years ago. He has given nothing away about himself. He’s the sort of person that when the bones are found in his back garden, you’ll tell Sky News “Oh he was a quiet sort, kept himself to himself.”’

It does make you think. And I wonder what the Eton execs who sneer and shout at me would say if they knew my job 12 years ago was to dance around the clubs of Ibiza, dressed as a choirgirl. Then again, maybe they were doing the same thing.