BEFORE our esteemed and well respected leader Steve Cohen booked some holiday last week, he decided to hand me the Backchat baton.

Originally not sold on the idea of writing such a high profile and high powered column, Steve called me into his office for one of his famous chat/pep talks.

“You’ll be fine Simon, you’re funny and I’ll even write my column (for last week’s September 28 edition) before I go – you can’t say I never do you any favours”, he said.

“We’ve got these life-sized Lawrence Dallaglios which we can give away, so you’ve got that as a follow up, and you’ve also got that funny story about Cllr Alan Hill from that meeting you went to, so it’ll be easy”, he continued.

Uneasily convinced, I agreed to take on the reins while Steve went to enjoy himself, away from the stresses of the office.

Only to walk in and pick up my copy of Midweek last Tuesday to discover the BFP overlord had pinched one of the ‘amusing stories’ I had planned to use!

This was Cllr Hill questioning Supt Gilbert Houalla about police response times, but confessing he told his wife to go back to bed after spotting a police car outside a neighbour’s home (yes, I confess, I was the mole).

So the moral of this story is to never trust your editor – who over-works you, under-pays you and who steals your amusing column-filling anecdotes.

* By the way, I think I’m writing next week’s Backchat column so if anyone has any funny stories I can nick, email me before Friday at sfarr@london.newsquest.co.uk. As they say, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.