In any line of work there are rites of passage. Sometimes it’s the trial you have to go through to be excepted by your peers – like being sent out for tartan paint or a left handed hammer. Other times its the jobs that just make you groan. ‘not again’.

In journalism its the stories that crop up that can mysteriously clear a newsroom leaving a rabbit-eyed intern right in the firing line. The prime suspect for that ‘groaner’ is usually a vox-pop (for snappers it’s the big cheque picture) but in online I’m sure that it’s the parrot story.

Now I haven’t done any empirical studies on this. I base this purely on a rough bit of googling. But the thought came to me when I watched the Croydon Advertisers video on Frisco the talking parrot.

What a great little video. A nice treatment of a traditionally duff story.

So remember it may be parrots catching burglers, prediciting earthquakes or even revealing affairs but one day you will be sent on a parrot story. Are you prepared?