IT’S hard enough trying to make a crust as a journalist without managers making it worse.

Most of them appreciate the job you do, and many become very different, very likeable people once the tapes and cameras are turned off.

However, some – and I’m looking in the direction of Billy Davies here – make life as difficult as humanly possible.

When “King” Billy went back for a second spell at Forest, one of his first bizarre acts was to do away with his pre-match press conferences, meaning the only access anyone had with him outside the club was after a game.

If that wasn’t tough enough, it seems Davies also has a tendancy to answer only the questions he sees fit.

I attended his first post-match press conference at the City Ground after Davies’s side had drawn 1-1 with Wanderers last February, and wondered whether he was having a problem with the East Midlands accent at times as he swerved one question after another.

On the final game of the season, Davies then made the head-scratching decision to hold his post-match press conference BEFORE the game against Leicester City, which ultimately spelled the end of Wanderers’ play-off charge.

He is lampooned, rather brilliantly, by a parody Twitter account “Mad Billy Davies” which is well worth a follow, if you like that kind of thing.

They say art imitates life – and when Davies faced up to the media after his side had thrashed Sam Allardyce’s West Ham last weekend, I understood why.

Davies strode into the room and without mention of the game, challenged Daily Mail journo Neil Moxley to a pork pie race. Yes, you read that correctly.

Apparently, Moxley had been engaged in a bit of banter with the aforementioned Twitter account where he said Davies would beat him in a race to said snack item.

Davies – the real one – had clearly been monitoring the account, and so challenged Moxley to a race over a distance of his choosing for a charity bet.

It may have been a good-natured bit of fun, I gather it is quite hard to tell, but it is just another page in what is becoming an increasingly strange tale at Forest.

With Davies’s challenge in mind, I travelled to Wanderers’ press conference this week with a meat and potato pie in hand, just in case Dougie Freedman fancied a race.

The stunt never came off, though, as the tasty item somehow disappeared in transit.

No idea how that happened.