Confessions of an American Media Man: What They Don't Tell You at Journalism School by Tom Plate. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2007, $16.50 (paper)

One day, media maven cum academic Tom Plate — a frequent contributor to The Japan Times opinion page — arrived for an appointment at the office of an executive at CBS television. Waiting ahead of him was a gorgeous young model with an Alabama accent who had been sitting there for about half an hour.

"I proposed to her she should simply knock and go in," Plate relates. "I knew this guy and formality was not his thing."

Taking Plate's advice, the woman barged in, and this scene ensued: "The door swung open . . . and the two of us could only see the lower half of the executive's body and the back part of that, as it were, was unclothed; and two legs of the female persuasion wrapped around his back in the well-known architectural tryst of passion. He looked over his desk at Miss Alabama (but fortunately not at me, whom he could not see). 'Oh, sorry to delay you,' the executive said. 'Can you wait 10 or 15 minutes more? This won't take any longer than that.' "