Like all journalists, I try to circumvent the brush-off from an official spokesman by taking a direct approach.

In retail reporting, that means,  telephoning a branch of a chain store to ask anyone who answers the phone: ‘When’s your last day of trading?  I want to come to the closing down sale.’

The answer is often: ‘We’re not closing down.’  This is followed by a yell across the shop: ‘No one’s said we’re closing down, have they?’

The last time I received this response was from Talbots in Regent Street, where closure and replacement by LK Bennett had already been reported in the trade press.

Why had no one told the staff that Talbots was retreating to the United States?

Like anyone in property journalism, I have been faced with a dilemma, after an agent has said: ‘We’ve got the unit on the market, but you can’t write anything, because they haven’t told the staff.’

Why not?

Invariably, I practice self-censorship because to me it is just a paragraph in Property Week and a chance to bargain-hunt; for the agent it is just a fee for lease assignment. For shop workers it is redundancy.

As the economy weakens, I expect to face this dilemma many times in the coming months, just as I did in the early 1990s. Then I telephoned the Birmingham office of Erdman Lewis to find out about the office closure, only to find no one knew the office was closing.

In Paignton last month, the woman at the Somerfield check-out was talking frantically to her customers about the future. She read the newspapers.  She knew that the Co-op had bought Somerfield, but no one had told her about future employment.

As a journalist this may sound self-defeating, but, my plea to retailers and other employers is:  don’t let me find out that you are closing a shop or office before you tell the staff.