I worked with Matthew Parris briefly when he was the parliamentary sketch writer for The Times in 1995 on a student placement. He knocked out his daily sketch

I worked with Matthew Parris briefly when he was the parliamentary sketch writer for The Times in 1995 on a student placement. He knocked out his daily sketch in a very short space of time (15 mins?), having spent little more than 30 minutes in the chamber. It was incredibly impressive, and would have seemed very casual were his focus while working on it not so intense. At one point he said words to the effect of "I might seem very rude in the next few minutes, but I must concentrate very severely on this".