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It's simple really: if you're paid to be an adviser, keep your mouth shut.

As Margaret Thatcher famously said on the occasion of the resignation of her chancellor Nigel Lawson in 1989: "Advisers advise, and ministers decide."

The same goes, I would suggest, for US presidential candidates and London mayors.

So s adviser Charlie Black was, er, ill-advised to tell magazine: "Certainly [a terrorist attack] would be a big advantage" to the McCain campaign. Yes, it may be true, and yes, lots of other people have said the same thing. But what's an adviser doing talking to Fortune magazine anyway?

Likewise, James McGrath, senior adviser to the mayor of London, . When a journalist asked him for his reaction to a suggestion that Mr Johnson's election could cause an exodus of Caribbean immigrants, he replied: "Well, let them go if they don't like it here."

Which didn't go down well, and Mr McGrath is now looking for a new job.

So unusual though it may be for a reporter, I find myself suggesting that maybe some people really shouldn't talk - at least not for attribution - to reporters.

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