Stark raving Starkey

I first encountered David Starkey in the late 1980s. We were debating freedom and civil liberties together in a BBC2 programme chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby. It was the first time I had ever been on TV as I recall, but even then my opponent seemed to be a seasoned media performer, holding forth to all and sundry before the show, assuming (as he always seems to) that everybody would want to hear him speak for as long as he felt like talking.

The debate involved me taking a civil libertarian line critical of the Thatcher government and Starkey saying things weren't at all bad. Then an incredible thing happened. Starkey came out on TV - declared himself Gay but unpersecuted. Dimbleby turned delighted to me, 'so what do you make of that then Dr Gearty, ah ha' (or words to this effect). I sort of said 'okay, good'... Clearly they all knew it was coming, a fab scoop on as live TV.

Then another amazing thing - Starkey didn't know me had never met me but had listened to enough of what I had said to detect an Irish accent, a sort of proper country accent not West Brit or even Dublin. 'Now Conor like me comes from a poor background...' he began to proclaim, on no basis other than how I spoke.

So there you have it: an obsessive self-publicist and casual maker of racist assumptions, even then over twenty years ago.