That's why you are so well informed," said the very important commissioning editor for TV station man.

I had been seated next to the very important commissioning editor for TV station man at schmoozing dinner, thrown by Sara, in order to try to get some of her latest documentary projects commissioned.

The "That's why you are so well informed" comment was in response to my replying to his "So what do you do?" that I was a freelance journalist and in response to his "Do you have any particular speciality?" that I didn't but would write about pretty much anything for anybody who paid me to do so.

I smiled a little self-satisfied smile that the very important alpha male, for whom Sara had spent the preceding hours marinating artichoke hearts and searing salmon, should appreciate I was well informed, before Sara stepped in to ruin it all with her own account of why I happened to know a little bit about a lot of things but not much about any of them.

Prior to this I'd been happily agreeing with him that a proposal for a 13-part documentary about the history of Liberia was probably unlikely to attract an audience big enough to warrant the inherent costs and dangers of making such a series and the plan to cap it all with an interview with President Charles Taylor unlikely ever to come off.

When he'd said one of his targets was to commission more programmes for juggling working women that would have both broad appeal and intellectual stature, I'd suggested they try to do a Marie Claire style 'at home with Cherie Blair' called something along the lines of From The Prime Minister's Bedroom ... featuring Cherie and her friend Carole trying on outfits and experimenting with make up, while at the same time Cherie took questions on anything from the difficulty of juggling a career and a young family to whether the likes of John Leslie should be given anonymity.

These were just a couple of the subjects, on which I found myself able to sound as if I have an extremely broad and in-depth knowledge of them - the others being the Hutton inquiry, the situation in Israel and security issues in Indonesia, as well as the more pressing issues of the day such as the 85-year-old who drove 6,000 miles across Europe to fulfil promise to his girlfriend (in her seventies) that he'd drop in for dinner, the fact that the oracle at Delphi was apparently high on gas, that Jennifer Lopez and her sister DJ Lynda are at loggerheads with each other, that if blonde hair was all blonde it would look green and that Brighton and Hove is the first city to consider bringing in a New York-style smoking ban which, since it has little control over dog fouling, drug taking, street brawling etc, the city seems unlikely to be able to enforce.

"I don't suppose she's told you the cause of the national raspberry jelly shortage has she?" asked Sara, overhearing the "that's why you're so well informed" end of the conversation.

She then proceeded to explain that I'd spent virtually a whole day, in which I should have been working, trying to find out why the two women I'd overheard in the corner shop alleging a shortage of raspberry jelly couldn't get hold of any (diving club regatta in which the coach dived into pool full of raspberry jelly was the only actual but not very convincing lead, I'd had).

"The thing about working form home," Sara further explained, destroying the myth I had begun to create of myself being a well informed, erudite, intelligent, well rounded person, "is that there is no one to stop you reading Hello, spending time in celebrity gossip chartrooms or watching News 24."

"So, that's why you're so well informed," said the alpha male again, before turning to the elegantly turned out Edith, wife of James the out-of-work actor turned urban househusband, herself a solicitor of the high flying Cherie variety who no doubt is genuinely well informed ...