DISTURBING though it must have been to be near the explosion in Cambridge, I did manage to smile when it got reported on Monday’s Jeremy Sallis breakfast programme on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

Shoppers evacuated several stores after the blast beneath Fitzroy Street, which was closed while police and fire officers investigated.

Things soon returned to normal after an electrical fault was found to have caused it, but Mr Sallis was keen to hear more from his newsreader Samantha Dalton.

Mr Sallis: “You were there, the explosion, the underground explosion?” he asked her just after she had read the 8.30am headlines.

Ms Dalton: “Nothing to do with me, just coincidence.”

Mr Sallis: “You were having coffee in the Grafton Centre. Did the cups shake, the earth move?”

Ms Dalton: “I’m such a good journalist I was sitting there and the news came to me. Someone came up and said ‘did you hear about the explosion?’

“I was basically ear-wigging, which is all journalism is about. I finished my sandwich and me and my sister went down, chatted to a very friendly copper, and he told me what happened.”

While we might argue about the definition of journalist, your columnist was left laughing aloud as he dwelt on the capriciousness of Ms Dalton, who waited until AFTER she had FINISHED her sandwich before going to investigate.

One cannot imagine her colleagues in Libya or elsewhere necessarily being granted that privilege.