Speaking as someone who once ‘doorstepped’ Charlie Haughey to ask him if he’d demanded a massive bribe from a businessman – long before the shocking story of his financial affairs broke – I’m surprised to learn that the Labour Party has only now stumbled upon this time-honoured journalistic practice.

Having stonewalled the Irish Daily Mail’s concerns about inconsistencies in Galway mayor Helen Ogbu’s back story, ignored dozens of calls and queries through the usual channels, and left my colleague Brian Mahon with no option but to put his questions in person, they were indignant when he actually did so.

Almost as indignant, in fact, as Charlie was back in the mid-80s when I buttonholed him at a social event and asked him an awkward question.

Earlier that day, I’d interviewed a businessman about an innovative fire-safety measure he’d developed, which was so impressive that it was to feature on the then much-vaunted BBC science programme, Tomorrow’s World.

When I asked whether the Irish Government had shown any interest in the system, to prevent the spread of fire between terraced houses, he revealed that they had indeed. He’d been told that if he donated IR£40,000 personally to Charlie Haughey, the then-taoiseach would attend the BBC filming of a trial of the system, and announce that it would be written into draft building regulations. He said, no thanks, and that was that.

I went back to the Irish Press, where I then worked, and told the story to the news editor. ‘Put in a query,’ he said, ‘to the Fianna Fáil press office.’ Well, I was pretty green back then, but not quite green enough to expect that Fianna Fáil was likely to confirm the story, or even respond at all.

But that night, as it happened, I was sent to cover another event at which the then-taoiseach was present and I thought, why go through the press office when I can just ask the man himself? So I did and, reader, I honestly thought he’d hit me.

He didn’t deny it, I later realised, but thundered ‘how dare you?’ and – exact words – ‘I’ll see about you!!’ By the time I got back to the office, PJ Mara had called to complain me to the editor, and I was warned never to approach Mr Haughey again. In fairness to PJ, when I asked him about it during a live radio broadcast years later, he shrugged and said: ‘I was just doing my job.’

That’s is exactly what the Mail journalists were doing when they queried a supposed ‘typo’ on Ms Ogbu’s personal website. ‘In 2006, my family and I moved to Ireland,’ she wrote ‘seeking safety and a fresh start after the tragic loss of my husband.’

Except her husband, a Nigerian politician, was alive and well in 2006 – and also in 2005 when she actually came to Ireland – but he was later assassinated in 2010.

Somehow, this ‘typo’ remained unchanged for ages, appearing in Labour Party literature and even being repeated by party leader Ivana Bacik, who told party members last January that Ms Ogbu ‘came to Ireland in 2006… following the assassination in Nigeria of her beloved husband’.

One typo might be considered a misfortune, to misquote Oscar Wilde, but three looks like carelessness – at best.

And as her flight to Ireland following the murder of her husband was the basis of her narrative… what was the typo, exactly?

Multiple queries went to the party (whose press officers you’re paying, by the way) last Friday, but there was no response until late on Monday afternoon. Hilariously, the party tried to claim they’d replied within ‘one working day’ but, given that Ms Ogbu’s website was deleted either late Friday or Saturday, it certainly sounds like somebody in Labour was working over the weekend.

They’ve now offered various explanations for the misinformation, blaming ‘editing errors’ and ‘incompetence’ by the website company, while trying to deflect from the crux of the matter by playing the victim card: calling to Ms Ogbu’s door to seek an answer to a legitimate question of an elected public representative was, apparently, ‘intimidatory and unacceptable’.

I guess so few journalists get off their backsides any more, and the rest are such lapdogs and activists, that encountering a real reporter doing his job was a shock to the pampered media darlings of the left.

Last Friday, politicians from all parties attended a memorial to mark Veronica Guerin’s 30th anniversary, and to commend the courage and tenacity that got her killed: now we’ve got politicians so used to media docility that they’re ‘intimidated’ by legitimate questions, and reckon that a three-day delay in issuing a statement is a prompt response.

But, as Charlie eventually discovered, complaints, tantrums and righteous indignation at impertinent journalists only get you so far…

A garda’s hunch is a tool, not a Stasi threat 

An invigorated Joe Duffy – minus the beard, the glasses and a little bit of ‘condition’, as a cattle farmer might say – gave a thundering speech at last weekend’s Veronica Guerin commemoration, and I thought his controversial call for gardaí to be allowed to confiscate mobile phones ‘on a hunch’ was taken slightly out of context.

Joe wasn’t exactly calling for the widespread invasion of personal privacy by a Stasi-type police force, but for a criminal investigation approach that prioritises the safety of the public over the privacy of the perpetrators. Gardaí can already stop and search people ‘on a hunch’, also known as ‘reasonable suspicion’ or what Americans call ‘probable cause’, and can confiscate phones and laptops with a routine court application. The use of the word ‘hunch’ may have freaked some folk, but any cop drama fan knows the most baffling cases are always solved on a ‘hunch’ – does nobody remember Inspector Columbo and his ‘just one more thing…’?

Penelope Keith has last laugh at The Good Life’s snobby Margo 

The character of Margo Leadbetter was meant to be a minor one, in the 1970s sitcom The Good Life, and in early episodes Penelope Keith’s suburban, social-climbing snob made only rare appearances. But Penelope brought a vulnerability to the role, especially as the bewildered butt of the joke by her self-sufficient bohemian neighbours Tom and Barbara, that eventually a routine sitcom was elevated into a classic ensemble piece.

She was always my favourite character in the show, miles ahead of Felicity Kendal’s mannered ditsy coyness. And considering she made her name portraying mild horror and bemusement at her neighbours’ ‘waste-not-want-not’ frugality, how ironic that she should turn out to be an avid recycler, after all. Her will specifies that, after her cremation, her ashes must be dug into her rose bushes: ‘I save orange peel for my compost so why not ashes for my roses – I can’t bear waste.’

A royal rebuke to the frenzied woke brigade 

When I saw that picture of JK Rowling with Queen Camilla this week I could easily imagine the outrage it would cause among the ‘women have penises’ brigade. The Harry Potter author has become their principal hate figure for daring to challenge the nonsense that humans can change sex, for defending women’s right to the safety of single-sex sports, refuges and changing rooms, and for battling the erasure of women as a biological sex category.

She’s still fighting an uphill battle – just recently our uber-woke INTO, which is busily schooling kids in this unscientific and offensive rot, talked about ‘workers who menstruate’. To quote the quip that drew Ms Rowling into this row in 2020: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people, someone help me out: womben, wimpund, woomud?’

While she was meeting the queen to promote young children’s access to books and encourage them to read – something Ms Rowling has achieved almost single-handedly in the age of tablets and screens – the underlying message from the photo opportunity was clear. Queen Camilla, who has talked about being the victim of an opportunistic sex attacker in her teens, is very much on the sane side of this deranged debate.

Rory is wearing the win well 

Having two identical green garments in his wardrobe now, his Masters’ blazer was an obvious choice for Rory McIlroy when he turned up in the Royal Box at Wimbledon this week. Online cynics suggested that his public displays of affection with wife Erica, just two years after he dramatically served her with divorce papers, were just as deliberate an attention-grabbing stunt as wearing the iconic blazer, but it looked touchingly genuine and spontaneous. 

All this ‘love all’ business clearly just got to him. And the green blazer is, after all, the only sporting trophy that can be worn for special occasions – unless you count Olympic gold medals, of course, but only if the wearer wants to look like a Bee Gee at the height of their 1970s fame.