Guido has long argued that the Lobby are self-serving and protect their sources from negative stories getting out, a point Guido demonstrated a decade ago with the exposure of Damian McBride. The Lobby it has to be said have nothing on Sports hacks, who are all about access, promoting their personal ‘brand’, some of them with popular Twitter followings miles beyond their own title’s circulation. They cover for the subjects they write about, hoping to ghostwrite biographies of the sportsman they cover. Their ‘client journalism’ is as unhealthy and bordering on corrupt as the Lobby was decades ago…

The Professional Cricketers’ Association Awards Fiftieth Anniversary party was held last Wednesday at the Roundhouse in Camden. Cricketers and the sports journalists that cover them were in attendance. Ben Stokes was there with his wife, Clare Ratcliffe.

The evening began happily enough for the couple, enjoying a drink at the bar, chatting with a mate, everything was fine. Then something happens and Clare tells Ben she doesn’t want to hear it, speak to the hand. They go off to a side room and a row starts, anyone at the event couldn’t be unaware of something going on. All of sudden Stokes grabs his wife Clare in a chokehold and then she either falls back, pulls away or is pushed back by him. The couple left the event minutes later…

The cowardice of sports hacks is one of the great unspoken press scandals. They are terrified of upsetting their clients, so sex scandals and drunken misbehaviour go unreported. When news reporters poke their noses in, they despair at what it means for them. Ghosted columns, lucrative ‘auto’ biographies that are no such thing, all are jeopardised by such revelations. The events of Wednesday night were witnessed by many at the Roundhouse. The existence of these photos is widely known by sports journalists. Fleet Street is too scared to publish them for fear of undermining the carefully constructed image of England’s cricketing sporting hero…

Ben Stokes is currently the bookies favourite to be BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and there were calls for him to be knighted after the Ashes. Sports journalists are protecting their client… Charles Saatchi accepted a police caution for throat grabbing Nigella…

