More thrills than skills – A half-life in journalism, part 99

Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, edited extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More thrills than skills: A half-life in journalism’, is being scheduled for publication next year.

I WAS asked to talk to MPs in a public room in parliament on May 9.

In hindsight, that was a mistake. More than 50 opposition MPs attended from the PA, the Marxist-oriented JVP and the Muslim NUA.

That evening I went to an European Union Birthday Party in the Hilton Hotel.

After a few gins, this fellow bounded up to me and announced, in the self-important way politicians do, that he had “exposed me as an M15 agent in parliament.”

I said I didn’t have a clue who he was and he looked decidedly put out.

Then I told him: “The M15 in Britain is a motorway, not a security organisation. Anyway, it’s MI6 you will be meaning.”