John Sargent, photo : P.A

I’m considering contacting John Sergeant to ask to take his place on Strictly Come Dancing.
I can’t dance, but neither can he. The request would have symmetry, because 30 years and three weeks ago, John telephoned me. I had difficulty in reaching across the bed to the portable telephone at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, because I was stiff, having just given birth to a daughter a few hours before.

A month earlier, John and I had been colleagues in the BBC offices in the House of Commons. I had a job; he was on secondment from the newsroom.

In 1978, our desks faced each other. We should have been talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, but we talked about parenthood. I already had a son, and John would tell me about his babysitting co-operative in Ealing. It all sounded strictly unglamorous.

Ealing parents kept account with bottle tops on their babysitting duties. With the self-deprecation we loved on Saturday nights, he told me that when he turned up to babysit at one house, the parents decided to take their child with them to the party.

My first thought from my hospital bed on hearing John’s congratulations was: ‘What good colleague.’ That vanished with his second sentence: ‘Are you coming back to work?’
I looked down at the defenceless, sleeping baby, and replied: ‘No, John, you can have my job.’

It was a split-second decision. If she had been fractious or crying, I might have said: ‘Keep my seat warm. I’m coming back in April.’In that case, John may never have been thrust aside live on camera by an embattled Margaret Thatcher at the Paris summit or entered Strictly Come Dancing.
The object of my decision is now married, has a first class degree in medicine from Oxford, is a registrar at Hammersmith Hospital, researching obesity for a PhD.

Perhaps John should meet her. She tells me that when she had children I am the mainstay of her childcare programme, and so what John started in me may be repeated.

In the meantime, as thousands in property lose their jobs, I ponder the random nature of gaining and rejecting work. I have never been the successful candidate when I have filled in pro forma job applications and gone for first and second interviews. Chance meetings work better. I am only working at Property Week because I met Jim Gardner, the news editor of Chartered Surveyor Weekly, at a Jones Lang Wootton party.

My advice to those job-hunting: a cheeky well-timed telephone call may work wonders.

Sometimes, property life collides with real life, and I find myself talking like a property person to an audience that is either hostile or indifferent.

I was reminded of this last week on reading the obituary of Professor John Barron, Master of St Peter’s College Oxford, until he retired in 2003.

While extolling the life of this great Hellenist, the Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘His other great passion was building. Three new buildings were added to the college on his watch; one of the disappointments of his time at Oxford was that his desire to acquire the land around Oxford Prison for St Peter’s never came off. As ever, he bore the outcome with equanimity.’

‘Equanimity’ is not the word I would have used.
I used to go to social events at St Peter’s while my son was an undergraduate there. The portly master would bellow: ‘Who is this terrible fellow Trevor Osborne? I’m told he’s gone bust before.’

Masters of Oxford colleges boom rhetorical questions, and do not expect answers.
The reason for Barron’s anger was that the Trevor Osborne Property Group had outbid St Peter’s in buying the prison.

Barron wanted the prison as overflow space for his college; Osborne succeeded in converting the prison into a Malmaison Hotel.

I tried to engage Barron in conversation, telling him that Trevor Osborne had a reputation in conservation, and had turned Wimbledon Town Hall into a shopping centre before his former company, Speyhawk, went into receivership in 1993.

But the Master would not enter into an argument and was never curious as to why the mere mother of an undergraduate knew so much about his adversary.

He continued on all social occasions to hope for the worst to happen to the Trevor Osborne Property Group.

When it was time to return to Oxford for the age-old Latin graduation ceremony at the Sheldonian, I stayed in one-and-a-half former prison cells at Malmaison.
Last Christmas, Osborne hosted a dinner at Oxford Castle, next to the former prison, to celebrate winning 12 awards for the prison conversion.

I hope Barron went to his grave reconciled to the fact that his adversary had done a good job.