I HAVE been qualified as a journalist – no, really – for the last 11 years, after passing a series of stringent exams.

Now, you may be surprised to read that. Journalists have to take exams? Is there a phone-hacking module? Very funny. But yes, we do have to show some kind of aptitude for the subject matter. We’re not unskilled idiots riding roughshod over libel law and the machinations of local government, are we? Don’t answer that.

Part of the course that budding journalists take is perfecting the art of shorthand. Shorthand is a skill where you condense long words into shortened versions, where the outlines of the letters are smaller too, so we can accurately transcribe what someone is saying.

It’s perfect for court reporting, where you are prohibited from electronically recording the proceedings, so essential for trainee journalists, who are expected to achieve a speed of 100 words per minute in order to pass their preliminary exams.

I was held back for a fortnight during my college course because I kept failing. In the end, I got 80 words a minute, and that, they decided, was enough for now. I ended up training after work once I found a job at a newspaper, and it took me another year to finally nail the top speed.

So I can entirely sympathise with students whose shorthand results were declared null and void after accusations of malpractice at their college, this week.

Our place did everything by the book, literally by the book since my course tutor wrote it. There were no shortcuts. I’d spend long nights with a withered hand, trying to get my speed up from 60 words per minute to 80. It was my Everest.

The closest my tutor got to anything approaching bad practice was when she, during a mock exam, used the word ‘rowdyism’. I threw my pen down in disgust, exclaimed “that’s not a word!” and stormed out.

It is, apparently, a perfectly acceptable word. She told me so. It is a word, though, that I have never heard before or since, only now in the retelling of the story.

The Northern Echo: The Premier League success is Jose Mourinho's third with the club

THIS is the last column before Christmas Day, and it marks the point where most people in paid employment start to wind down before the festive break.

Of course, the exception to this is the emergency services, and retailers, both of which get busier over Christmas.

And while in newspapers there is no such thing as a Christmas break, we still slow down a bit. The bank holidays, wherever they fall, are viewed as some kind of inconvenience that newspaper deadlines have to fit around, while managing staff levels that are obviously depleted owing to family pressures and so on.

Without spilling too many trade secrets here, therefore, much of what you read over the Christmas period has been produced at an earlier stage. It’s like when BBC 2 stick repeats of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. Nobody bats an eyelid. It’s the same with newspapers. And the radio. Do you really think your favourite presenter will haul their backsides in on Christmas morning? No chance!

In fact, this column was written in August. Hopefully, nothing major in that time has happened that would require any kind of rewrite.

It’s guaranteed that most of the stuff you’ll see in the papers and on TV and on radio in the next few days will have been produced earlier on. It’s as certain as Jose Mourinho leading Chelsea to their second consecutive Premier League title – it’s in the bag.