IT is almost impossible to be a lazy journalist these days. Trust me, I’ve tried. If only there was time to step out for a gin and tonic – a gentleman’s measure, naturally

– in order to have a good old think about the one subject you are going

to write about that day before considering filing something at about four-ish.

But this is 2016 when a deadline is always five minutes ago.

The nature of this job has changed beyond all recognition from the days when I was a copy boy in the old Albion Street offices. My main task was to fetch and carry for the journalists – pictures, page plans, glasses of brandy from the Press Bar – and keep the legendary and downright scary editor George McKechnie in a good mood.

Well, not exactly. George, a huge man with a beard you could hide a badger in, didn’t really do good moods. It was more a case of what scale of bad he was feeling and the entire editorial floor knew that if my fellow workers and I were able to forge the boss man’s favourite meal at lunch then they might just get through the day without being b********.

Let’s put it this way. My last moment of clarity before death will be this thought: a cup of broth, haggis, neeps, tatties, chips, two sachets of brown sauce and a dairy milk. That was and remains the most important list I’ve ever committed to memory.

Journalists have always worked hard. It’s just that back then there was more potential for a bit of downtime. You could disappear off the radar – for a bit – whereas these days if you get to drink a whole cup of coffee without having to write a blog it feels like a day off.

So when someone accuses a journalist, or journalism as a whole, of being lazy, then those of us who every day – that’s weekends, bank holidays and at all hours – chip away at the coalface of truth are rightly going to be offended.

You can call us rubbish, many are, and disagree with an opinion or the take on a tale. But lazy . . . Nah, I’m not having that.

So when Mark Warburton this week made such an accusation it incurred the blood to boil ever so slightly. The Rangers manager was absolutely within his rights to defend friend and former colleague Malky Mackay and his appointment as performance director of the Scottish Football Association, but some of his comments were ill-informed at best.

“I know Malky very well,” he said. “He’s a football man through and through. I’ve read some shocking statements about Malky. I get very disappointed when I see people copying and pasting articles from three and a half years ago. I think that’s lazy journalism.”

First of all, the text message scandal, well documented in this paper over the last few days, happened only two years ago. Not to refer to it would be a dereliction of duty. No article was cut and pasted. What happened was that certain offensive text messages sent to his phone by a man by the name of Iain Moody were quoted. Accurately. That isn’t lazy. It’s called doing the job.

Warburton doesn’t like the Scottish media; that much is certain. We should, as an industry, be able to cope with that – much of our job is holding people to account – but to suggest Mackay’s appointment should have been hailed as a stroke of genius rather than questionable and controversial because of his mistakes and – it has to be said for the umpteenth time – lack of credentials, is absolutely ridiculous.

The whole ugly racist text scandal was indeed a sordid affair. But Mackay, for his part, willingly agreed to undertake lessons on diversity and equality. Mistakes were made, but I do not believe Mackay is a racist, homophobe, anti-Semite or sexist. Moody, his head of recruitment at Cardiff and the man responsible for the vast majority of the texts in question, expressed remorse in the aftermath.

“I’m not denying it was me,” he said. “But that’s unrecognisable and it’s not a reflection of where I am and what I stand for, and the education that I have had; and I don’t mean necessarily formal education but upbringing.”

So ask yourself this. If you had a work colleague whose “banter” contained so many racial slurs would you have anything to do with them? Indeed, Mackay was on his way to Crystal Palace to reunite with Moody when the story broke in August 2014.

It was absolutely right Mackay was questioned about his past and it is equally correct that all of us give him an opportunity to prove himself in this, arguably, next to impossible role. But, please, spare us the claptrap that any blind eye should have been turned because he’s a football man.