There is no shortage of shocking statistics about the desperate state of the jobs market, but here’s a figure I am pretty sure will be the most depressing you’ve heard so far. The other day I put up a message on Facebook saying I was “in the market for a personal assistant, if you know anyone wanting to get journalism work experience, and if they don’t mind being bored, not being paid at all, being ridiculed in print afterwards and possibly being sexually harassed too” and I got ten formal applications.

Yes, that’s correct. TEN people out of the 285 people I am ostensibly “friends” with on the social-networking site wanted the “job”, or knew someone who wanted it. It was particularly surprising as I wasn’t even entirely serious. I’d put up the message at the suggestion of a freelance journalist friend, who often “employs” assistants from his local journalism college to help with menial tasks, and did not really expect a response.

But when the enthusiastic letters and e-mails started flowing in, I thought I might as well go ahead. Such “work experience” is exploitative, of course, but if it helps someone build up their CV during the biggest media recession in living memory, or more importantly, if it persuades someone to give up on the idea of a media career in favour of doing something more meaningful with their life, then why not?

Besides, it would be intriguing to find out what it is like having an assistant. After all, it’s not just the likes of Britney Spears and Sir Stuart Rose who have PAs nowadays: certain luxury hotels provide business guests with PAs as they check in, offering to help with anything from hiring a meeting room to getting an important presentation changed, while demand for online virtual assistants is climbing, with individuals and small businesses using them for everything from arranging dinner reservations in Norway to arranging blind dates. Evalueserve, a research company, estimates that revenues for such companies will grow to $2 billion (£1.2 billion) by 2015.

And so it came about that I spent a large part of last week being personally assisted by Kamalpreet from West London. What was it like? Well, the first thing to say is that it was surprisingly easy to get used to.

There are two schools of thought about the role of PAs: the first being that their duties should be strictly restricted to fixing appointments, making travel arrangements, screening phonecalls, doing research and so on; the second being that they should assist with anything and everything, up to and including dry cleaning and buying your wife an anniversary present.

I thought, as a liberal man, that I’d be in the former camp, that I’d find it difficult to palm off menial tasks on someone capable of so much more, but by the end of the first day phrases like “could you stick that in the post?” and “could you hold on to that?” and “a cup of tea would be nice” were tripping off my tongue as easily as “hello”. By the end of the second day it was taking a considerable amount of effort to resist asking Kamalpreet to trim my nostril hair. Having a PA really is a fabulous luxury.

The second surprise was the way in which having a PA increased my productivity. Of course, I expected to get more done, given that there was someone around to bring me lunch, do research, open doors etc, and I’d read the results of a survey of the managing directors of 5,000 businesses in the UK, in which they concluded that having a PA made them more than 32 per cent more effective.

But for me it wasn’t having someone around doing menial tasks that made the real difference. The thing that made the real difference was simply having another human around. You see, I spent part of last week working at home, something I do most of the time and something I’ve complained about in this slot on several occasions, given that it makes one prone to taking unnecessary daytime naps, having long, unnecessary conversations with your postman, waking up late, spending entire days in elasticated clothing, playing air guitar/singing/talking to yourself, loneliness and general eccentricity.

But having a PA is not only an antidote to the isolation, not only does it mean there’s someone around to laugh at your jokes, but, crucially, it forces you to behave sanely.

On the morning my pretend PA arrived, I had by 10am cleaned the loo, washed, dressed, loaded the dishwasher, straightened the towels in the bathroom, made sure there was some fresh bog roll in the loo, tidied various magazines and newspapers into a neat pile, dusted my desk, opened the blinds and put the kettle on, tasks I would not have normally got around to until 4pm, if at all.

Indeed, having a PA is the perfect antidote to all the many downsides of homeworking and I recommend it wholeheartedly to remote workers everywhere.

Having a PA also has an additional advantage in that it forces you to be a little more cheerful and grateful. On a number of occasions, in and out of the office, I found myself succumbing to habitual gloom, moaning about deadlines and an impossible workload, despairing at my own inefficiency and incompetence, but remembering that there was someone who would kill for my job in earshot, I stopped myself.

Though this is something of a double-edged sword. As the careers of Carly Fiorina and Colleen Barrett demonstrate — both had PA-type roles early in their careers before they became senior executives at Hewlett-Packard and Southwest Airlines, respectively — the one downside of having a highly competent assistant is that you are constantly aware that there are people out there who could and would do your job better than you, given half a chance.

sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

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