One reason I joined the National Press Club in 1995 was that on various occasions before Hong Kong’s handover I’d darkened the door of the FCC. I hoped that the NPC’s substantial oblong bar might be cousin to the FCC’s main bar with diverse central casting characters including criminal barristers of the Rumpole flavour, cargo shippers, pilots, politicians and others seeking what was in the wind as journalists’ tongues loosened, and vice versa.