As a former journalist I sometimes get asked ‘what’s the best story you’ve ever worked on?’

Two decades of employment in newspapers here meant I had the opportunity to be report on many of the most important moments in our recent history – historic political developments, terrorist outrages, sporting triumphs and failures.

I was also privileged to meet a more diverse range of people than I would otherwise have expected and to witness sights that will always stay with me (watching Air Force One roll along the tarmac of the runway at RAF Aldergrove as George W Bush arrived for his ‘Iraq War summit’ with Tony Blair at Hillsborough is one such example).

But when I get asked the question about my best story I always reply ‘Neville Sanders’.

Which almost always brings the response ‘Who’s that?’

Which takes me back to 2003 when I was a fresh-faced and ambitious young reporter with the Belfast Telegraph. I was determined to make my name in journalism and constantly sought out my own stories, networking a wide range of contacts prepared to feed me information.

I remember very clearly I was at a murder scene in the spring of that year when I got a call from one of these contacts wanting to share some information.

The information turned out to be a letter written by Carrickfergus council to Peterborough council. It was a circular letter sent to all councils throughout the UK requesting support for a campaign to launch an inquiry into the death of private Paul Cochrane, a young soldier who shot himself at a Royal Irish regiment barracks.

Usually such a missive would receive a formal response, a vague letter in return expressing support or not. It’s the sort of correspondence which runs through all local government on a daily basis.

But on this occasion Carrickfergus council received an unexpected reply. Their own letter was instead returned to them with a hand-written message scrawled onto it. The note read: ‘Members of the armed forces do get killed, be it by accident or design. That is what they are paid for.’ It was signed ‘Neville Sanders’.

I Googled the name. It turned out Neville Sanders was the Conservative leader of the council, a self-made millionaire and colourful, controversial character who seemed to attract friends and enemies in equal measure.

My source told me that Carrickfergus councillors had been outraged by the tone of the response. He also told me that they had decided that the matter should be dealt with privately.

I had a different idea and decided I would call Mr Sanders.

I was at home that afternoon. I phoned Peterborough Town Hall and was told Mr Sanders was not available. I waited half an hour and tried again, this time I got put straight through to his office and was met by a gruff, impatient voice.

I remember being caught unaware, scrambling to find a pen and an empty page on my notebook. I nervously asked him if he thought his language in the correspondence was appropriate. I told him members of Carrick council had been offended by what he had written.

He began his response: ‘I don’t give a fuck what Carrick council thinks.’

And off he went. My hand began to ache as I scribbled shorthand notes at speed. He said he was ‘fed up paying taxes to pay for to pay lazy Irish bastards in Ireland’. He said ‘soldiers had to be prepared to deal with a bullet’. He demanded an apology from the people of Northern Ireland for all of the British servicemen who had been killed here.

He went on: ‘We are quite happy for Northern Ireland to fuck off and run its own affairs. Tell Carrickfergus, wherever it is, that their whole bloody scenario over there has killed a lot of Englishmen. If you do not want to be part of the UK, then fuck off.’

The conversation probably lasted less than ten minutes but the implications of it would stay with me, and Mr Sanders, for years.

I remember I rushed to transcribe my notes, because I wanted to ensure that the record was word perfect. Then I went to bed.

I was in the office early the next morning and wrote up my story ‘Tory councillor’s foul anti-Irish rant’. The editor seemed pleased with it and it appeared on the front page. I was happy that I had produced a front page exclusive and, I suppose, I imagined that would be the end of the matter.

Not a bit of it. The first sense I had that something was a bit different was when I was at my desk reading the first edition. One of the Tele’s then army of sub-editors,a mysterious gang of senior professionals that young reporters showed reverence towards, strolled by, pointed at page one and growled ‘That’s the best story that’s ever appeared in this newspaper’. I flushed deeply.

The phone calls started sometime in the mid-afternoon. BBC, UTV, national papers, all wanting to talk to me about what had happened. Journalists usually try to avoid becoming the story but, in this instance, because the comments had been made directly to me, there was no other way for other media outlets to cover the story other than going through me.

It led all the broadcast news bulletins that evening. Mr Sanders made multiple TV and radio appearances, and while he had naturally toned down some of the more profane nature of his language, he was still bullish and not in the mood to back down. At no point did he deny any of the comments he had made to me.

Later the anchor on BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra won an award for her interview with Mr Sanders. The judges said she had demonstrated she was ‘not afraid’ to ask the politician the difficult questions (not that I’m bitter).

The story turned out not to be a one-day wonder. Instead anger grew over several days and the pressure on the local politician began to snowball.

Perhaps sensing he was in trouble Mr Sanders then changed tactics and began to backtrack. After a short period claiming he was misquoted, he then conceded that he had made the remarks but insisted I had provoked him. The Tele received a solicitor’s letter claiming I had phoned him more than twenty times and alleging that I had continually barracked and abused him with anti-English comments, until I got the response I was looking for.

I had to produce my personal phone records to nail this definitively as a lie.

By now the story was being pursued by every news organisation in the UK. Private Eye jumped on it gleefully, labelling the previously obscure politician as Neville ‘Fuck the Irish’ Sanders.

I got to know the family of Paul Cochrane, the young soldier who had taken his own life, and whose case had sparked the original correspondence. They asked me to go to England to confront Mr Sanders. I agreed.

By now his career was in desperate trouble. He was facing investigations from the Standards Board, which examines the standards of local politicians, and from within his own party. A motion of no-confidence in his leadership of Peterborough council was introduced and his own Tory group divided into those who would support him and those who were ashamed by what he had said.

I went to Peterborough to cover the council motion and to meet Mr Sanders. I remember the very surreal experience of three TV camera crews being there to film me as I got off the train.

When it became clear that Mr Sanders would lose the vote he decided not to attend the council meeting. I went along anyway and presented a letter from Paul Cochrane’s parents to the council chief executive, asking her to pass it on.

I remember being struck by the strength of feeling, both in favour and against Mr Sanders. I met people who were outraged by him, but also others who said he had done more for the town where he lived than I would ever understand.

One tiny elderly female Tory councillor was so angry that she barracked me for several minutes outside the chamber. Shouting into my face that I was orchestrating a ‘Sinn Fein plot’ to discredit the armed services.

Two large Tory councillors actually stood at the doorway to the council chamber to block my entrance at one point. The whole episode was being filmed and after I tried to make a light-hearted remark, they eventually stood aside.

Tensions were running high. When the vote was cast Mr Sanders lost and was deposed as council leader.

It was only later in the evening I realised that I had nowhere to stay in the city. I went to a bar, befriended the landlord, and ended up sleeping on his son’s bunk-bed that night. I was awake early the next morning, still severely inebriated and on a packed commuter train back to the airport, trying to file my copy for that night’s Tele over the phone.

That really should have been the end of the matter, but it refused to go away. The Standards Board held an investigation and banned Mr Sanders from being a councillor for two years. He was later also thrown out of the Conservative Party.

But he refused to go quietly and launched legal action, taking the matter to the High Court. He managed to get the severity of his punishment reduced to a prohibition on leading the council for 12 months.

I was asked to take part in several investigations and, while I did my best to co-operate, I avoided too much active participation. In my view the story was done and finished and it wasn’t my role to decide on the punishment. Also, in truth, I had become tired of it, I wanted to move on and leave it behind, to move on to new stories and challenges. But it refused to leave me alone.

There was one humorous moment where I was asked to provide my notes for the High Court. I duly complied. Then I was contacted by a court clerk who asked me to translate them. It seemed there was nobody in England who used the old Pitmans 2000 shorthand system which I had been taught at journalism school.

In 2005 Mr Sanders went on the offensive after his punishment was reduced, claiming publicly that his reputation had been entirely vindicated. The court had decided that there were defects in the way the Standards Board tribunal had dealt with his case, but he instead choose to represent it as defects in the original story I had written.

I was moved to phone him once again and we fenced with each other once more. He insisted his interpretation of the outcome was correct. When I tried to question him he kept repeating ‘but the court awarded me costs’ over and over.

This led to a renewed flurry of interest in the story. The Nolan Show picked up on it asked me if I was prepared to debate the issue live on air with Mr Sanders. I wasn’t hugely enthusiastic, but it seemed a better option than simply allowing him to rubbish my reputation.

The next day I waited beside the phone. Then a Nolan producer contacted me and said Mr Sanders had decided not to participate. I didn’t admit it but I was relieved. It was time to let it lie.

The following year Mr Sanders lost his council seat and his political career was finally over.

Neville Sanders died in August 2016, with his reputation never having fully recovered from his short interview with me in 2003. I imagine that he would have been completely unrepentant to the end.

Reports on his death in local media reflect on his huge energy and enthusiasm as a businessman and councillor, and his spirited efforts to improve his own city. He paid out of his own pocket to keep Peterborough’s Lido open in 1991 and 1992 and was once arrested when trying to help a local couple find 50p to put in a parking meter. In 1990 he was bound over to keep the peace after a charge that he had punched another councillor was dropped

I learnt a lot about the nature of journalism and politics from him. And just as much about the volatility of human nature.

I’m making flapjacks this afternoon. As baking goes it’s pretty low maintenance.

So I decide to get my son involved. He’s always nagging me to let him help out in the kitchen.

But I decide today’s the day when I’ll really let him help. Not just get him to pose for a picture with the wooden spoon and then send him off to watch Danger Mouse; but to truly get his hands messy.

Which is a challenge for me. The kitchen is my zone and in it I do things my way. I don’t accept help in there easily and family and friends know not to offer.

The last time I let my son loose in the kitchen he looked over the side of the mixing bowl into my chocolate cake mixture. My anxiety levels soared.

With a mischievous smile he asked if he could try a bit.

I reluctantly agreed.

Then he sneezed directly into the bowl, rendering all the contents unusable.

Today we start with me trying to explain how the scales work and allowing him to measure out the oats and butter. It’s messy and some oats spill on the floor, but nothing too traumatic.

Mixing is a different matter. Great dollops of the oaty mess spill over the sides of the bowl like waves crashing over the top of a sea defence wall.

He enjoys adding the golden syrup. Unfortunately when I tell him ‘enough’ he keeps squeezing the jar as he moves away from the bowl, leaving a sticky trail behind him like a slug.

I can feel the vein behind my left eye begin to twitch, but I force myself to keep encouraging him and praising him.

Placing the gooey mixture into the baking tray is a partial success, in that some actually goes in.

The end result which emerges from the oven is surprisingly successful, if a touch unstable because of the over-exuberant addition of too much syrup. It falls apart when we try to eat it but my son is too flushed with the success of his achievement to notice or mind.

The floor is a different matter, although in fairness the butter between my toes works as a useful magnet for attracting all the rogue oats and sugar granules.

He wants to bake something else but I gently advise him that it would be difficult to top the flapjacks. We’ll leave it for another day.

In truth I had to work very hard to let him do it without taking control myself. To let him make his own mistakes.

It occurs that me that doing kiddie things with him comes a lot easier than him doing grown-up things with me.

He enjoyed his baking experience today and will be a little bit better next time. But he’ll always do it his way, not my way.

He learnt a little bit about doing it for himself.

More importantly I learnt a little bit about letting him.

I go to bed late but I still can’t sleep. It’s too warm and I keep turning over, throwing the covers off me and trembling each time I hear a noise through the open window.

I’m up several times during the night. It never seems to get properly dark during June.

As I lie there, afraid and praying for sleep, I think about the usual things – work, money, my family. I think about the weekend just past, the glorious sunshine and the wonderful solace of being with family.

I suppose I must have eventually dropped off because the alarm terrifies and confuses me with it’s hideous metallic horn. I sit upright quickly, every sinew of my body and their connecting messages with my brain calling out desperately for more rest.

I get up quickly. I know from past experience this is best. Then I stumble downstairs holding the bannister for comfort, still somewhere between awake and asleep.

I contemplate breakfast but decide I can’t face it today. Instead I iron my son’s school uniform and stand under a tepid shower, allowing the spray to bounce off my skull, hoping it will replenish some energy.

I kiss my sleeping wife and son goodbye. The joy of the weekend just past making the separation now a little more bitter.

I drive automatically along the motorway towards the city, changing the station on the wireless several times until I give up and snap the dial off. I prefer the silence now anyway.

I park in my usual spot and walk along the road, where shops and offices are opening and people are reluctantly dragging themselves to face the new week.

I’m still not quite alert, my brain feels like wet sand and the muscles in my arms and legs scream out in protest over my insistence on moving around. My stomach is unsettled, I know I’m hungry but unable to face food.

Despite my lethargy I find myself noticing lots of detail. Two empty, crushed Guinness cans on the pavement beside the bus shelter. The arm protruding from the sleeping bag in the doorway of the church. The crow dragging the empty plastic bottle, larger than its body, across the spring grass.

I stop at the coffee shop, my usual buffer before work. The friendly Eastern European woman knows my order without having to ask and reminds me to produce my loyalty card.

‘Just two more and you get one for free’, she tells me.

I go to my usual seat and study the faces, some are regulars, some new. There’s the guy in the tweed jacket with his laptop, who I’ve long ago decided is an academic. The woman who wears the black sandals who has a different book everyday. The older woman who ties her dog to the railings outside and then picks the window seat with a clear view of it.

I check the time on my watch, working out how many minutes I’ve got before I go to work. Then I begin to count them down.

My coffee is cool enough to drink now and I start to sip at the bitter, black liquid, hoping it can restore something in me.

The weekend has never seemed further away. It’s a miserable Monday morning.

That’s the thing about being a daddy.

I’m constantly on duty, forever vigilant, always on the lookout for new forms of stimulation and entertainment. I never stop worrying.

As I’m always telling people, I simply never get a second to myself….

The sun knows no mercy.

I’m holding my son fast between my legs in a way I’ve seen farmers do with sheep they are about to shear. One of my hands is pinning his arms while the other is vainly trying to flick the lid off a plastic bottle.

My boy is squirming wildly, like a desperate young trout in a net.

‘Come on buddy, I need to get the cream on you.’

‘No daddy, I don’t like it. I don’t like it.’

‘I know you don’t son but it’s really important.’ I look into his eyes and put on my kindly, responsible father voice. ‘If I don’t let me do this you’ll get burnt and it will be really, really sore.’

He softens a little. I use the distraction to quickly move the bottle towards him and push down the button. At first nothing happens. I push it again with the same result. I reposition my arm and start pushing the button over and over. My son lifts his head to see what is happening. I’m pumping the button desperately until, when I’m just about to give up, a violent spray of sickly white liquid erupts from the nozzle and goes right into his face, and his open eyes.

He begins to scream like the demon in The Excorcist film when she’s been sprayed with holy water.

‘Ah daddy! That’s really, really sore!’

Welcome to the summer.

Acceptable parental standards have changed out of all recognition since I was a kid. This is evident in many areas of society. Corporal punishment is an obvious one, as is smoking near a child. The balance of consideration has shifted irreversibly towards juvenile welfare and we’re all better for it.

Another area which has shifted is attitudes towards exposure to the sun and a greater awareness of the dangers of it. I think it’s fair to say this simply was not on the agenda when I was running around the fields in north Antrim in the 1970s. I assume the link between sun and skin cancer was known then but it hadn’t culturally penetrated everyday life, just like the link between lung cancer and smoking was known decades before cigarettes were banned from buildings.

On one hot day every summer, when I was a youth, we’d head to the beach. I’d run around in the water and lie on the warm sand, enjoying the heat of the glass-like particles against my back. And then I’d suffer miserably for it later. Sunburn was just a thing to be endured, I don’t recall that it ever entered our heads that you could do anything to prevent it. Blistered and peeling skin was as routine as getting a cold, just something to put up with and get out of the way.

I remember my brother and I used to play a game where we’d see who could rip the biggest patch of whole skin off our boiling red backs.

As I said, it was a different time.

I’m a bit wiser now, but still prone to accident. I have remarkably pale skin, likely to burn if I walk too close to a toaster. I’ve never tanned, rather my skin knows only two shades – pallid white or lobster red. Sometimes with a dry, peeling patchwork to complete the effect.

Unfortunately I’ve been burnt countless times and I know that the pain of really bad exposure is indescribable. On one unfortunate occasion I spent a day driving a dumper truck in scorching summer weather. As the sun rose to its highest point I applied sun cream, but forgot to cover the backs of my ears. I sat there on the dumper for hours, oblivious as my ears baked in unforgiving heat. I knew something was wrong that night when the terrible pain began to take hold. But the full horror was only revealed the next morning when I woke up to find that my ears had swollen hideously, giving my face a ghastly elephantine quality. I’m not particularly vain but I did have a nervous couple of days while I waited and wondered if my ears would ever return to normal. Eventually they did.

Now, I try to be more vigilant with protecting my skin but I still make mistakes. On holidays abroad I put high factor sunblock on but often miss a spot which means when the sun disappears and I go out at night there’ll often be a bright red streak somewhere on my arms or legs, as if I’ve been branded. Once, on holiday in Tenerife, as I lay by the pool, I had to pretend to be asleep every day when the hotel’s ‘tanning expert’ walked past to avoid getting a lecture.

I know the importance of putting on sun cream but I just don’t like the physical act of doing it. I hate the sliminess of the whole process, the nauseating coconut smell and the fact that scores of dead insects immediately glue themselves to my sticky limbs, as if I’m a human fly trap. It’s like preparing yourself to leave the house but then smearing custard all over your arms and legs before you do it. From the moment I put it on I can’t wait to wash it off.

My son has inherited my pale skin and I’m ever on my guard to ensure that he doesn’t make the mistakes I have. We’ve been enjoying a period of unusually dry and sunny weather and he wants to make the most of it. It’s cruel not to let him get outdoors as much as possible which means I’m constantly chasing after him with the factor 50.

Often I get more of the wretched milky liquid on his clothes than his skin and sometimes I lather it so thick on his face that he looks like a boxer getting ready for battle with Vaseline smothered eyebrows, but at least I know I’m doing all I can to protect him from sun exposure.

As long as I don’t blind him with the sun cream in the meantime we’ll be just fine.

Among the infinitude of presents my son received on his recent birthday was a colourful large rectangular box.

It was one of the first items he grabbed at because it was something he’d been nagging about getting for a while – a magic set.

Now, before I disappear down one of my characteristic long, world-weary whines, I should declare at this point that it was myself who purchased this item for him. It’s the inevitable father/son dynamic, he wanted it and I did as I was told. Also it was on sale.

But even before he’d seen it I knew it was one of those toys that (I presume) all parents dread.

If I buy him a ball then there’s not much explanation required. I roll it to him and off he goes while I go for a (well deserved) sit down.

But the magic set comes with its own 250 page instruction booklet as well as a stage-by-stage explanatory DVD.

My son enthusiastically opens the box, pulls out the contents, grabs the magic wand and waves it around while mumbling some secret words.

Nothing happens.

He gazes at me mummy and I expectantly.

Mummy is fastest to react.

‘Daddy will show you how it works son.’

My spirits sink. I try to distract him with some of the other toys. But even wearing the Batman voice-changing mask which makes me sound like the Satanic demon in The Exorcist film fails to amuse. I roll a few toy cars along the floor without enthusiasm but he won’t be distracted from the prospect of magic tricks.

I grab the black and white book and start to flick through the pages, trying to find an easy starter. The message on the box says it contains 100 tricks, but I’ll settle for just one.

Eventually I fix on producing a coloured ribbon from my empty hand. Now I don’t want to be expelled from the magic circle but I will reveal that this includes wearing a garish plastic thumb which is the least convincing attempt at a prosthetic since Gazza wore a pair of fake plastic breasts after Italia ’90.

I do the trick. My son stares at me. It’s all a bit awkward. It’s certainly not David Copperfield, or even Paul Daniels.

It doesn’t get any better. The trick with water in the bottomless jug is naff and the one where I’m supposed to hide little foam rabbits in the palm of my hand is frankly embarrassing.

My boy keeps saying: ‘But they’re in your hand daddy, I can already see them in your hand.’

Throughout the tortured experience my son watches with growing impatience, making it clear that he is dissatisfied with my execution of the tricks, rather than the tricks themselves. I suppose successful magic is based around having dexterous hand skills and the ability to distract your audience from what you are really doing. In truth I would need a pretty big distraction to be good at this, perhaps something like setting the house on fire.

My son is only five but I try to explain to him that there are certain things in this world which take time and patience. Not every skill can be mastered straightaway and there is merit in learning a craft, making mistakes, having another go, getting better, and keeping at it. There are plenty of quick fixes in this world but if he wants to be a magician then he’s going to have to work at it.

He listens to every word, his little blue eyes fixed on mine. I wonder if I’ve made a little breakthrough.

Then he says.

‘OK daddy, but can I open the science kit now and can you make something blow up?’

The magic set is currently gathering dust under the bed. It will probably stay there for a long time. But some day, perhaps when we’ve run out of other things to do, it will be pulled out and we’ll give it another go. Most likely my son will never pursue the interest any further. But maybe, just maybe, he will.

By all means go and buy the magic set.

You’ll like it….not a lot…but you’ll like it.