More thrills than skills – A half-life in journalism, part 100

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.

THREE days later, there was the fateful encounter with the PM.

At a private birthday party given by Nirj Deva, MEP for the South East of England, the PM roundly reproved me. “There is only one thing I have to say to you and that is that I am not the man who is going to divide this island.”

This encounter was colourfully reported in the Sunday Leader. The newspaper I had come to edit now became my sternest critic with an editorial, gossip column items and ‘inside’ political pieces about me.

Then the Directorate of Internal Intelligence (NIB) started its work: surveillance started, my room was searched and hotel employees and records examined.