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Just in case there are some poor souls out there who still haven't got it, never, ever actually apply for the job in question. Placing advertisements with bogus application deadlines is designed to identify and winnow out no-hopers and runners-up.

The real trick, effortlessly understood by the new director-general of the BBC, is that merely deciding privately not to apply does not really work either. You have to be seen publicly to be a non-applicant.

In this context it helps enormously to state you have absolutely no intention of applying. The real masters of the art, with a nod in the direction of history and Michael Heseltine, add that they can conceive of no circumstances in which they would apply. This merely gets you to stage one of an elaborate, and very deliberate, dance involving many complex manoeuvres.

The next stage is to insist that you absolutely intend - note the word intend rather than promise or undertake - to stay and complete the job you have only just begun or clearly haven't completed. Meanwhile the schmucks, lulled into a false sense of security, fill in their forms, write out their manifestos and make a virtue of the fact that they are being open and above board.

Journalists may appear to be a significant hazard, but an accomplished artiste can, with careful choice of words, get round their questions and even emerge with a stronger hand. Naturally contracts are a personal matter and you have no intention of divulging personal information - thereby side-stepping the fact that it is the information contained in the contract that is confidential and not the fact that one has been signed - or not.

Direct questions such as: 'If offered the director-generalship of the BBC will you turn it down?' appear a little tricky at first sight, but offer great potential. Deploy the dangerous but rewarding 25deg deflection whereby you appear to take the question head-on while bending it slightly out of harm's way by answering a question that is subtly different. 'Yes. I will turn down any approach from the BBC.'

A linguistics doctoral student could devote many years to the meaning of that sentence. Is the initial 'yes' an answer to the precise question asked? Or is it merely a precursor to the question actually answered with the substitution of the word 'approach' in the answer for that of 'offer'.

This is academic anyway, because although Thompson apparently pledged himself to turning down any approach - as opposed to offer - there was nothing to prevent him from approaching the BBC. Of course the really clever bit is that the real master of this art does not do anything at all - other than make up their mind they really want the job.

You have a campaign manager to do all the dirty work for you - in this case a rather pushy former Oxford friend with qualifications from an even dirtier world than broadcasting - football rights management.

He makes sure your interest is registered with head-hunters and rings the BBC chairman's office as many times as it takes. Then the master stroke.

You make it clear you only decided at the last minute to have a go and that the job was simply too great an opportunity to turn down. Brilliant.

Dawn Airey take note and inwardly digest.

- Raymond Snoddy is media editor of The Times

30 SECONDS ON ... DISCREDITED PUBLIC DENIALS

- On 25 October 2003, Michael Howard said: 'Iain Duncan Smith has earned the right to lead our campaign for victory at the next election.' Within two weeks he was the Tory leader.

- Striker Louis Saha had no intentions of leaving Fulham when in January he said: 'The talk about Manchester United is an honour ... but I'm happy here at Fulham.' One month later he was bought by United.

- Similarly, Scott Parker said he wouldn't be going to Chelsea: 'I wouldn't have signed a five-year contract if I didn't think I could fulfil my ambitions (at Charlton).' He was at Chelsea within a month.

- On April 29 2003, Real Madrid claimed it had 'no intention of negotiating the transfer for David Beckham'. By June 18 Manchester United announced Beckham was leaving to join los galacticos.