STEVE CASSIDY: "It's not new, the denigration of IT personnel as interchangeable, incompetent drones"

After a chance meeting with an accusatory MP, Steve is forced to defend the much-maligned reputations of IT staff and journalists

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Even I, with my exotic lifestyle and winning social manners, do not expect to bump into an MP just wandering around the streets of London. It’s taken four decades or so for us to be sitting in the right place at the right time - that is, outside a noodle bar at some wobbly metal tables just after 8pm, a bit north of the National Gallery in Chinatown. My partner is the one with the parliamentary employment history, and she jumped up from her outdoors seat in an instant, chasing a nice grey-haired chap inside. One moment later and we were doing the introductions, and that slightly edgy moment when my career crops up in conversation. Quick as a rattlesnake, the politician said: “IT, is it? You blokes are in a lot of trouble right now.”

Definitely a moment when I wanted my hottest, snappiest response ready, and definitely the occasion when I came up dry. For a short while I couldn’t really figure out what he was referring to; eventually the penny dropped. He was referring to the swathe of large-scale hacking attacks on retail businesses, supermarkets and so on, which took place in May. From where he was sitting, as a member of the House of Commons in his mid-70s, the remedies for the problems that beset the big supermarket brands in those weeks were firmly in the hands of the “IT crowd”, and we had been found wanting in our responses at the time. So much so that within a few seconds of being introduced to an IT person, he was permitted to pass judgement, to wonder why I wasn’t burning the midnight oil somewhere fighting back the hordes of hackers.