The usual blindfolds, handcuffs and gags were slapped on live news and discussion programmes last Thursday, including me and my lot on Good Morning Britain. Don’t mention the by-election. So not a peep, other than to say the polls had opened. Why are broadcasters still forbidden from talking about anything to do with the campaign until voting closes that night? Every other media outlet – podcasters, social sites, the morning papers – are free to speculate, predict, debate, campaign. But not telly or radio. Woe betide any mainstream broadcaster who breaks the rigid Ofcom code. Why is TV deemed to have some kind of exceptional influence over how people cast their vote on the day? Television isn’t the omniscient power it was back in its pomp. More people now get their news from YouTube. And YouTubers are free to say on polling day: ‘Burnham’s got this.’ (Which he had; it had been screamingly obvious for weeks.) So why couldn’t my breakfast show tell it like it was? I genuinely don’t get it.

Starmer loyalists elevated the art of denial to a new level on Friday morning. ‘Leadership contest? What leadership contest? There isn’t one!’ Technically they were right – the starting gun may have gone off in Makerfield but at that precise moment everyone was still in the blocks, although calves were flexing and toes curling for the imminent off. Housing Secretary Steve Reed was magnificent; he’d drawn the short straw as media minister of the morning, but his disavowal of reality was heroic. Nothing to see here. Labour WON! Onwards and upwards! It was like describing an aircraft in a terminal nose-dive thus: ‘Still in the air! No casualties! Pilot firmly at the controls! What’s all this about a crash?’ Seventy-two hours later, smoke curling from the fresh impact crater outside No. 10, I was surprised we weren’t being assured we’d just witnessed a safe landing.

Does anyone in the media drink any more? During working hours, I mean. When I started out in news 50-odd years ago, alcohol was an essential lubricant to the job. But when at a lunchtime programme meeting this week I offered a glass of nicely chilled rosé to the veteran news producer, you’d have thought I’d produced class-A drugs. ‘God, no. I’ve got a meeting at the Beeb after this.’ I suggested one glass of Provençal was unlikely to cloud his wits. He shook his head again. ‘No, no. I mustn’t arrive smelling of wine.’ Back in the day, everyone was fragrant with alcohol by lunchtime. When I joined Yorkshire Television in Leeds as a reporter in 1980, there was an enormous bar (heavily subsidised) right behind reception. It was usually full by 11.30 a.m. and stayed that way until midnight. When I transferred across the Pennines to Manchester, on my first day I was introduced to the delights of Granada TV’s legendary Stables Bar. Drinking in TV used to be ubiquitous. Mind you, so was cirrhosis.

Huge feedback to my ITN/C5 documentary last month on El Salvador’s controversial CECOT maximum security jail, probably the harshest prison regime in the world. I spent two days inside. Mass murderers, rapists and child-killers are packed like battery hens in enormous cells. No mattresses. No possessions of any kind allowed. Nothing to read, watch, write or draw with. Bright lights burning 24/7. No prison visits. Nearly 100 men to a cell, constantly visible through the floor-to-ceiling bars to ceaselessly patrolling armed guards. All are gangsters who once held this tiny central American country in a murderous grip. None will ever see daylight again. It’s a living death, and clearly a breach of human rights. I found it a harrowing experience. But CECOT has restored near-complete normality to El Salvador. And guess what most people who watched the documentary say to me – people of all ages, classes and types? ‘We could do with a place like that here.’ Hmm.

I just turned 70 and was sharing memories of major national events with a consultant friend of similar age. But perspective is everything. When I recalled England winning the World Cup in ’66 as a standout childhood moment (we were both ten), he shrugged. ‘I’m Scottish. So, er, no, not really.’ OK, how about the legendary heatwave of ’76? ‘I told you. I’m from Scotland. It never stopped bloody raining up there that summer. And it was freezing.’ I suppose I could have mentioned Bannockburn, but that was a bit before our time.