Too many years ago, this young reporter was about to move from one of Britain's biggest newspaper groups to a paper with a daily sale of fewer than 200,000 copies. A hard-bitten veteran, who had spent years reporting for the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph pleaded with me over farewell drinks not to go to the Financial Times.
"Don't commit journalistic suicide," he said. "This is your wake before you are dead. This is your funeral as a journalist. The Financial Times is not a newspaper: It is a trade magazine for the City."
How wrong he was. The Financial Times today is one of the top five daily newspapers in the world, the very best in my view. It offers an unparalleled combination of superb business coverage, the world's best international news, a gaggle of gaggling columnists from the profound to the quirky, including an agony aunt and an agony uncle, inspired writing on the arts, culture and literature, and a reasonable smattering of the most important sporting news.