It was the end of a memorable night at The Andrew Olle Media Lecture, the annual cross-media shindig in Sydney.

The lecture was delivered by Ray Martin whose central thesis was that good commercial television journalism is often supported by passionate media individuals, the likes of Murdoch and Packer. When media companies are run by banks and other financial institutions only looking at the bottom line, he argued demonstrably that journalism isn’t well supported in the commercial television sector. As I walked around the room at the end of the night chatting to people, the general vibe was that it was an interesting, well-timed, and well-delivered speech.

One of the funniest lines, though of the night, was delivered by the ABC’s Managing Director Mark Scott, who spoke about last year’s controversial decision to pull the feed from Channel 9 because of their use of the “debate worm”. Steadfastly denying it was his decision (as briefly reported), he said it just wouldn’t happen at the ABC. “I’d dare say any decision to pull the plug would have been mitigated by several committee meetings, until eventually a few weeks down the track the plug would have been pulled”. I’m reasonably sure the loudest amount of laughter in response came from our table, as we all knew exactly what he meant.

After the event was well and truly wrapped a few of us ended up at Ivy, arguably’s Sydney’s grooviest place at the moment, via the Marble Bar.

“Hey James, this guy’s an ABBA fan”, my colleague said to me last night on the fringe of the dance floor at Ivy. She’d met him moments earlier and they were getting along famously, it seems.

It was then she told him I’d been learning Swedish and had recently been to Sweden. “Let me tell you mate”, he said. “If you’re gay and that’s true, that’s really cool, and good on ya, that’s great stuff. But if you’re straight and that’s true, that’s kinda weird”. With apologies to straight male ABBA fans, we both laughed in agreement. “I’m guessing it’s more likely the former than the latter”, he said, and we laughed again.

A few minutes later some cool music came on the sound system and so I thought I’d leave them alone for a moment and go have a dance. “Tell me honestly”, I said to my colleague. “Do you think I can hop on the dance floor for a bit of a groove or am I just gonna look like a tragic 43 year old man in a dinner suit trying to look young?”, I asked.

Generally it’s a bad look, though, isn’t it? A group of well-dressed adult to middle-aged men and women who’ve just been to some sort of corporate function and then find themselves at some groovy bar surrounded by young folk. I kinda think we carried it off okay, though, and had a great time.