AS someone who didn’t particularly shine in the world of academia, the thought of ‘training’ when I started out as a journalist at the age of 17 didn’t initially fill me with a sense of joy.

However when the editor made it abundantly clear that it was a non-negotiable as far as my future was concerned the incentive was robustly set in place and I got to grips with shorthand, newspaper law, local government law and a string of other learning curves that left my non-journo mates nodding off.

Then came the day when I submitted my first expenses claim. I don’t remember what it was for, but it was pitifully small – and honest.

I was taken on one side by an ‘experienced’ journalist – who was all of 21 – and given some further ‘important training’, this time in the dark arts of journalists’ expenses.

You have to remember that this was in the days before the taxman saw expenses as a lucrative form of filling the public purse. Consequently there was an unwritten rule between editors and reporters about expenses.

As long as they weren’t ridiculously astronomical, they were accepted as a legitimate way of topping up our rubbish salaries. So I quickly learned ‘creative accounting’.

However the work on expenses by regional hacks paled into insignificance compared to some of the legendary stories that boiled around Fleet Street in its heyday.

There is the apocryphal tale of Daily Express reporter Rene McColl who had been sent to cover the Suez Crisis.

His expenses were thrown back by his editorial manager who said it was unacceptable to simply write ‘Coverage of the Suez Crisis: £500’ and that more detail was needed. They were resubmitted as follows: ‘Taxi to the station 7s 6d; tip to the driver 2s 6d; coverage of the Suez Crisis £499; taxi from the station 7s 6d; tip to the driver 2s 6d. Total £500’.

He got his cash.

Then there was Daily Mirror journalist Sydney Young who submitted – and was paid – for the following: ‘Entertaining special legal contacts (no receipt available) £140; purchase of stamp in order to submit expenses (receipt attached) 19p’.

Or there’s the one about another Mirror reporter Colin Dunn who had his car towed out of a bog in Ireland, tipped the tractor driver and submitted his claim to the cashier as follows: ‘Money for old rope, £10’.

As the taxman started taking his cut of journalists’ expenses, they just became more creative.

So when newspapers started cleaning up MPs last week over their allowances, was there just a whiff of hypocrisy in the air? It all started unravelling, of course, when Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was embarrassingly caught out in the adult films expenses claim furore.

From that point on the papers were full of stories about claims for second homes and average allowances running at £145,000 each.

But was this a case of ‘pots’ and ‘kettles’?

Well not really and as one friend quipped when we were talking about the issue: it’s the size of the pots and kettles that matter.

Despite the many amusing stories spinning around journalists’ exes there was, believe it or not, a measure of control. Then subsequently the taxman and, later, the newspaper owners started cracking down on it all in a major way.

Bob Maxwell even appointed a journalist to deal with the situation at the Mirror with the rider that he wanted to stop his reporters ‘lifting money out of my back pocket and putting it in theirs.’ Of course we learnt after his death that he had been even more outrageous in the inappropriate use of money that strictly wasn’t his.

The MPs, of course, are drawing on the taxes paid by you and me to fund the allowances they get and in 2007/08 these rose to a staggering £93m – a 6.1 per cent increase on the £83.7m of the previous year.

It is simply out of control and even Parliament recognises the fact as it has brought forward a Committee on Standards in Public Life investigation, which was originally scheduled for the end of the year.

There clearly needs to be some sweeping changes. After all if journalists had to forgo their ‘second round of Havana cigars and port’ as outlined in a memo by Sunday Mirror editor Cyril Kersh during an expenses purge then surely it’s not beyond the wit of our MPs to be similarly abstemious when claiming allowances from the public purse.