Standing beside the Thames, the Palace of Westminster appears to have been magnificently and painstakingly decorated by a divine hand reaching through the clouds to squidge a fistful of sand and water through its fingers to form endless elegant curlicues. Closer in, policemen guard the iron gates. Beyond that, jovial gentlemen carry out airport-style security checks. Eventually I am admitted to the awesome sanctum of Central Lobby - an octagonal room as vast and ornate as any cathedral.

I sit on a bench and fumble with a paperback until my friend James lopes over to escort me to the considerably less grand eyrie that is the press gallery. Political hacks have a bar to themselves and one look at the Dickensian caricatures (a spasmodically twitching eyebrow here, a cleft foot there) assembled in it and you can see why politicians might be keen to preserve this segregation. Drinking, however, seems to be not so much tolerated as positively encouraged: several of the spirits (gin, brandy, whisky) bear the House of Commons's portcullis on the label. I ask for a tumbler of Madam Speaker's whisky, a 12-year single malt selected by Betty Boothroyd herself at a special tasting in the Commons cellars in 1995. My latest love, when he arrives, orders a pint of bitter. The barman shakes his head sadly. "Oh no, don't have that, it's awful," winces James, looking to the barman for corroboration. My latest love wants to see how terrible it can be and demands to try it nevertheless. One watery sip later, he's begging for something else.

James promises that in the dining room the wine is very good so we scurry along there. "Just one bottle left, sir," intones a waiter with a face like a toby jug as we settle into our seats. My latest love and I exchange panicked glances. But the press gallery cellar has not yet run dry; it is only that James always orders the same thing - Chateau La Tour de By 1990. Very soon we are constrained to find an alternative and halfway through this, second, offering I learn a new piece of journalistic jargon. James's colleague's mobile rings. A new story has come in and the newspaper is keen for her to write a piece on it. Obligingly, she scuttles down the corridor to have it read down the phone to her as she takes notes. Shortly afterwards, she will rearrange the words a little and "file it back". Filing it back is what happens when editors decide that an off-duty hack with a skinful of wine can make a more intelligent contribution to a piece than someone with access to the news wire, the reference library and their own brain.

This is no reason for us to curtail our carousing. In deference to Toby Jug, who we think ought be allowed home at this late hour, we order a bottle of wine to take into the bar. To a man, the waiters insist that they do not mind a bit if we linger, and insist that we remain in the restaurant. We wage a war of politeness before one of them cracks. "I wouldn't go in the bar," he says meaningfully, his eyes pleading with us to see reason. We refuse. "There's a man spread-eagled on the bench," he admits desperately. Disappointingly, when we arrive there is not. But there is a middle-aged woman leaning heavily against the wooden panelling confiding at full volume to a gentleman who certainly isn't her husband, "The whole point of love is that it's irrational."

Apparently, this drinking is crucial to the job of political reporter, and known as "cultivating contacts". Surveying the mass of addled minds that only hours earlier were filing reports on weighty matters of state, my latest love is impressed. "It's even worse than news editors fear that it might be in their most lurid imaginings."

And even worse than that if the claims of one well-oiled journo are to be believed: "I said to Margaret Beckett the other night, 'I think one of your backbenchers has had 27 double brandies,' and she said, 'I think I know who you're talking about,'" he boasts, gazing out of the window towards a graceful parliamentary tower bathed in golden light. I raise a glass and murmur a toast to democracy.