I have spent this best part of this week trying to arrange an interview with a prominent sports personality, fighting my way through a forest of agents, managers, lawyers and ultimately his public relations team. I still haven’t got to him yet- and now I’m not inclined to do so because the PR people want not only to be present but to see what I write before it goes in the paper. Copy approval they call it. No way, Jose.

PRs, have become the bane of the sportswriters' life. Gone are they days the days when you could thumb through the contacts book, dial  Bobby Moore’s home number  - or that that of many other sports stars - and have a  friendly  chat on the phone or arrange to meet for a drink and a natter - on or off the record.

In those 'good old days' I had Muhammad Ali’s number and recall once calling him for a  quick quote about an upcoming fight, Quick quote? I put the phone down an hour and a half later. Like others of my era, I have been spoiled by having direct contact with those I wrote about. Now you have to go through a myriad of buffer zones, being shunted from pillar to PR, to get in a couple of pre-approved questions.

The PR industry is taking over sport. We are awash with media minders. Every personality, every, every organisation, seems to have one - or several -  and they come in three sizes: the good, the bad and the utterly useless.

Let me declare an interest.  Some of my best friends are PRs.  In fact, for a very brief spell during my journalistic menopause I was one myself and my son happens to be a press officer at Tottenham Hotspur.  I am glad that most football writers of my acquaintance tell me that he is extremely helpful to them, although I must say that whenever I ask him "What's going on at Spurs?"  He says "You'd be the last person I’d tell."

PRs range from the ultra-professionals like Max Clifford to the downright obstructive, like a few I could name but perhaps shouldn't in the interests of, er, public relations.

The best PR I have ever known was a wonderfully laconic Irish-American John Condon, who was in charge of publicity of Madison Square Garden during Ali’s heyday.  At the press conference after the first Ali-Frazier fight he threw Diana Ross out of the room after asking her, "Who are you with, little lady?"

"I am Diana Ross." She trilled.

Said Condon, "I didn’t ask who you are, I asked who are you with?  Which media?"  She shook her head. "Out little lady." He ordered. "Media only here." He also did the same to Telly Savalas at another world title fight. Can you imagine that Posh or Simon Cowell getting he heave-ho they crept into a post-event press conference here?

With PRs comes spin. That dreadful four-letter word that bedevils sport as much as it does politics.

But again, there are some outstanding spinners. Mike Lee (pictured), architect of the London 2012 bid team’s successful communications campaign is surely sport’s supreme spinmeister. The former Premier League and UEFA spokesman also did for Rio 2016 what he did for London 2012.Why on earth he wasn’t snapped up for England’s 2018 World Cup bid is baffling. Instead he is punting on behalf of rivals Qatar. Lee was sometimes a bit testy, but at least he was someone you could work with.
  
The trouble is so many PRs think they are Alastair Campbell spin-alikes. Yet he spun do deviously for New Labour that in the end no-one believed a word he said –and hopefully the Iraq inquiry won’t either.

Too many PRs are failed journalists. Others, like Campbell, have been successful ones.

In sport the best example of a poacher turned gamekeeper is Simon Greenberg, who many of us recall as an L-plates cub reporter, but always with good nose for news looking to dig up a good story, and never shy of "turning someone over" as we say in the business. But not any more.  He went on to become sports editor for the London Evening Standard before going over to over to the other side with a bucket- load of money from Roman Abramovich to run the communications at Chelsea where, it has to be said he won few friends among some of his former colleagues with a defensive and sometimes abrasive manner. 

But he has top-level contacts and has now been brought in step up he tempo of he 2018 football bid. And should rumours be true, is destined for a career in real politics once he has finished with sports politics.

Other journos who have left top jobs include Colin Gibson, sports editor of the Mail and Telegraph who ran the communications for the FA and now the TCCBB and more recently Brian Doogan, a great writer has left the Sunday Times to become communications chief at Aston Villa. Roger Kelly, once sports editor of the Mail on Sunday, is another who knows what the scribes want when wearing his hat as a PR for the the Laureus Awards.

At the other end of the PR scale we have those graduates who step into jobs clutching their meaningless degree in media studies, never having door-stopped or filed a 750 word match report on the whistle. They wouldn't know the inside of a newsroom from a nursery. Another irritation is PR companies who employ hordes of pushy young things to flood us with press releases and emails - usually boring bumph - and then call constantly to ask whether it is going to be used or not.  Invariably it is not

Increasingly PR has become a domain for women and I have to say there are some very good ones. Jackie Brock-Doyle, for instance who succeeded Lee at 2012 after doing a terrific job a short notice when she stepped in for the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. Then there’s Caroline Searle, greatly experienced in the game setting up on her own after leaving the British Olympic Association (BOA) and now looking after several sports, including rowing, and is in charge of England’s Commonwealth Games PR.

And, of course, there was Giselle Davies (pictured), the former multi-lingual IOC communications director who was an an expert at being even-handed, even when taking awkward questions from her dad, TV commentator Barry Davies.  

 It is always a pleasure to deal with helpful people like swimming’s Dave Richards, Frank Warren’s media man Richard Maynard, Ron Boddy at the ABA, Steve Chisholm and his team at Fast Track and Mike Lee's old, sparring partner Jon Tibbs, who, after losing out with Paris bounced back with Sochi’s winning 2014 Winter Games bid and is now pushing Munich for 2018.
 
The best Government sports PR surely was Phil Townsend - the Ministerial media minder for Kate Hoey and Richard Caborn before he landed his dream job at Manchester United. There was no one better in my experience at marking your card and putting you in the picture off the record, which really is what most journalists desire. Graham Newsom, who looked after Colin Moynihan when he was Sports Minister, and was for a time at the BOA, was also one who had our respect. 

Matt Crawcour at UK Sport was another you could rely for vital background, even when off the record in a spirit of mutual trust. By and large, the TV PRs are pretty good too, notably those at Sky, especially when they have pay-per-view to sell.

However there are still many PRs who seem to delight in being obstructive rather than proactive. The one thing we hate is being deliberately duped or misled only to find out later that what we knew was accurate.

Actually all we ask from our PR friends is to to remember that basically we are all playing the same ball game although n this case not trying to get the ball into the net but their clients’ names into the papers.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games.