You can’t come in late with a hangover from all the free

You can’t come in late with a hangover from all the free booze and get away with it.What is the proudest achievement in your working life? My proudest achievement was getting my hands on Bizarre. And the really great thing now I edit Bizarre is that if any of them behave like idiots, my revenge is very swift, and very public.And the worst? Coming into the office the next day when you’ve been out until 4am stalking celebrities. I monitor all the showbiz gossip websites and read as many magazines as possible. The Drudge Report [a news website] is a must, too.What’s the best thing about your job? When I first started on the showbiz beat, I couldn’t believe that I could go to the best parties, drink free champagne and mingle with A-list celebrities Ten years later, I still can’t believe it. Sometimes I will have changed my column to include pictures or stories from a film premiere or a party.Do you consult any media sources during the working day? It’s my job to keep on top of what is going on in the showbiz world throughout the day and night, so I’m constantly reading the wires, checking out what’s going on in LA and New York. I seem to remember bunking off lessons to watch Scott and Charlene in Neighbours because it was on during the daytime then. I always listened to the Radio 1 breakfast show.What media do you turn to first thing in the morning? I read The Sun first to check what has changed in later editions overnight.

I automatically turned to Rick Sky’s showbiz gossip column.And what were your favourite TV and radio programmes? I don’t think I ever missed an episode of Top of the Pops and I loved Spitting Image. What inspired you to start a career in the media?
As a teenager I was obsessed with current affairs and politics and an avid reader of newspapers. While I was studying for my degree, I worked on the student paper and wrote to every national newspaper begging for a job.When you were 15 years old, what was the family newspaper and did you read it? My parents always got The Guardian so I read that, and also the Daily Mirror because my dad liked their football coverage. Aged 33, her most memorable scoops include “Posh Pregnant with David Beckham” as well as the news that Gwyneth Paltrow was dating Chris Martin. As editor of Bizarre, The Sun’s showbiz section, Victoria Newton is paid to attend an endless round of champagne-fuelled parties and premieres, before exposing celebrities’ bad chat-up lines, criminal dancing and drunken behaviour in print the following morning.

More than anyone else, Berger is the reporter’s reporter.’The Great Reporters’, (Pluto Press, £14.99) www.greatreporters.co.uk. He continued to spend days off, notebook in hand and camera over shoulder, scouring the city’s sidewalks for stories. A prolonged spell as a rewrite man, taking stories apart and putting them together again, was his university. No one has ever written intros that better encapsulated a story’s facts and spirit in a few lines.