These are trips where journalists are taken abroad by companies and wined and dined to excess in exchange (well, not that this is discussed directly, of course – that would be far too sordid) for publicity on their products.

On one trip to Spain I went on, the PR man was an ex-motoring journalist who some of us knew pretty well. As PR people go he was quite likeable. He told us younger hacks that there was no Bribe and so we decided to play a trick on the older hacks - the ones who traditionally were used to getting The Bribe.

The Bribe, I should explain, is a gift that you get given for sparing your valuable time going to stay in a five star hotel in Biarritz or Monte Carlo or Aspen so you can be told about a new product. It happens all the time.

Over dinner that night in Spain one of the old duffers whose nick-name was Bunty looked around the table all wide-eyed and then said in a low voice that he’d last used whilst leading a commando raid on a Nazi missile bunker in Norway in 1942, “Psst! Can’t seem to find the present. Not in me room.”
I said, “What? But it’s in your room.”
“In our room?” said about 10 of them in unison.
“Yes, I said, “in the corner near the big window.”
There was silence for a moment and then...
“Ah!” says Bunty, “of course. Thought so. Spotted it earlier. Right. Good.”

The next morning us younger hacks made sure we checked out early and then we all got on the bus. Around five minutes later all of the older hacks came marching out of the hotel, each clutching the large rubber trees that had been growing in pots in their rooms. You know, they were stealing them. I saw the manager looking all goggle-eyed but he never said anything, I think it’s because he was so shocked that a bunch of arrogant English journalists could nick the hotel’s rubber plants just like that on masse, but also that they could do it so obviously. They each clutched their plants in one arm as they signed their hotel bills with the other hand. I reckon that the manager also thought, well, these people have paid a fortune to use our hotel so what’s a few rubber trees?

Meanwhile, us younger journalists sat on the bus trying hard to keep straight faces as these fools brought on their tall rubber trees, cursing and grumbling as they struggled to ease them through the coach’s narrow doors.

“Ha!”, one of them said to me, “forgot yours did you?” And they all started laughing out loud at my inexperience. We laughed along with them, we laughed so loud it hurt and we continued laughing long after the old hacks had stopped. I think they thought we were mad. Of course, once we all got back to Heathrow and they strolled through customs like a moving rain forest the game was up.
 
“Hang on a minute there, sir,” said a Customs officer, “you can’t bring that bloody tree in here.”

“I’ll have you know this is a present!” shouted Bunty as he was ushered into a back room by uniformed officers and apparently subjected to an examination that had him walking funny for weeks.