Will The Real Deidre Moffat Please Stand Up?

It's a commonplace that standards in journalism have slipped a little over recent years. When I cut my teeth on the Stockport Leader, I was taught to walk the fine line between doorstepping a potential story and leaving people to enjoy their weekends unmolested and in peace.

Times have certainly changed. This weekend, the hunter became the hunted, as I spent the whole of Saturday avoiding the persistent enquiries of a pack of hacks, intent on getting me to spill the beans on poor old Deidre Moffat.

I'd been away a few days, so had missed the headline news that Deidre - an old sparring-partner from my days at the Birkenhead Beagle - had (apparently, and - it has to be said - rather amazingly) taken up as the mistress of a successful insurance company chief executive.

Anyone who knew Deidre would have been more than a little surprised at the idea. Apart from a fondness for the bottle and a taste in clothing that could best be described as Brodie-esque, she was never a woman who courted controversy.

That's why I was more than a little taken-aback when the baying hounds (many of them no doubt stringers) refused to leave me alone. In fact, I had to dig deep into my archives to throw them some small sop before they slunk away into the sewers from whence they came.

I can't remember where this snap was taken - I myself had supped too heartily from the vine that evening, if I recall - but it seemed to satisfy them. Of course, I omitted to tell them that the Deidre in this picture would now be around 72 years old, even if she had survived a lifetime of alcoholic abuse.

Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

Don't Ask Deidre...Ask Bill!

Life as a provincial journalist isn't all exciting interviews, scoops and front page headlines, as my acquaintance Ian Green will no doubt attest. The pressures of reduced staffing often mean that even a seasoned hack is called upon to undertake duties that might otherwise seem beneath them.

That's how I found myself pulled, at the last moment, to cover for the Birkenhead Beagle's resident agony aunt, Deidre Moffat. For over thirty years, Deidre was a mainstay of the Beagle, always ready to offer advice and 'a shoulder to cry on' to the teenage mothers of Bidston, the recovering alcoholics of Prenton and the confused homosexual bank managers of Oxton.

When, after a particularly heavy night on the Guinness, she failed to show up at the office, the then Editor, Benny Anderton, asked me to 'ghost' her column, I can't pretend I was entirely delighted. When he reminded me that I hadn't turned in my Court Report that week, however, I was shamed into stepping into Deidre's (famously size 8) shoes.

Never again. As I leafed through the pathetic pile of correspondence that had arrived in the woman's in-tray that week, I said a silent prayer of thanks to the Almighty that I had hitherto been spared such insights into the emotional traumas of the Wirral's residents.

As a professional, I nevertheless tried to muster a little enthusiasm for the task in hand, but there are only so many times you can write 'Pull yourself together, woman!' and 'Get a life, you sad individual!' before your concentration wanes.

It's a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of a lack of empathy. I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with the unrequited lover, the man who has just discovered his wife in bed with his sister, the dipsomaniac who has lost his job as a forklift truck driver after one too many mornings on the Woodpecker. But not when they're the same person.

At least Benny Anderton never asked me to cover for Deidre again, and I'd wager that the management at the Beagle felt the £3,000 they subsequently spent on residential treatment for the Wirral's favourite agony aunt was possibly the best investment they ever made.