I was lucky to enter journalism when newspapers were still profit machines. My first job was part time; I started before dawn and left around midday.

My colleagues used to discuss lunch arrangements and those who had nowhere else to go would go to the canteen together. One day I stayed late and they asked if I wanted to join them.

The canteen was, in fact, Kensington Place, one of the best brasseries in London and a convenient short walk from the office.

On my first day, the editor had told me that I could take whoever I wanted wherever I wanted on expenses.

“All we ask,” he said earnestly, “is that you’re honest about it.” I took him at his word and went mad — eating out day and night with friends.

At the end of the week I showed my exes to a colleague to check I’d filled the form out properly. He looked aghast.

“You can’t hand that in. You’ll show us all up.”

He meant, of course, that I needed to up my game. My expenses were far too small.

David Robson’s wonderful memoir of his life as a journalist is, for the most part, set in that time when the characters involved in the trade somehow seemed to match the vast amounts of money that were spent and made by newspapers — the likes of Harold Evans, David Bailey, Jilly Cooper and Bernard Levin (of whom one colleague said, “He does the work of two men for the pay of five”).

Budgets were set according to how much was needed to get the job done. Talk about halcyon days.

Robson’s career began in the late 1970s on the teen girl magazine Honey (which he ended up editing) and took in the Sunday Times, Mail, Independent and Express.

The bulk of his professional life was as a section editor rather than a writer — a brilliantly innovative one, for example, of the Sunday Times magazine and its sports section.

It was only on the Express, which he joined in 1998, that his talent as a feature writer flourished, when he was in effect given licence to write about what he wanted whenever he wanted in his Saturday spread.

Robson also brought his brilliance as a phrasemaker to the JC for many years.

I was lucky enough to sit next to him throughout my time on the Express and as well as observing a master craftsman at work, I was treated to a seemingly unending series of anecdotes about icons varying from the Beatles and Muhammad Ali to pretty much every Fleet Street legend.

The “Golden Age” of newspapers has long gone, with advertising revenue a shadow of its former self and paid circulation a victim of the digital revolution. But there is still — thank heavens — no shortage of bright, stylish writers determined to make their name somehow in the profession..

The title, The Owner’s Mother Loves My Stuff, refers to Richard Desmond’s time as owner of the Express. In today’s ever more tenuous journalistic world, it’s difficult to imagine a better guarantee of employment. Until, that is, she doesn’t any more.