The full line, as I recall it on Diana Rigg's lips (others remember and probably even heard it slightly differently) ran: “I’m completely with you on the free press. It's the bloody newspapers I can't stand.”
So, with thanks to Tom Stoppard and his excellent play Night and Day, in which the words are spoken, I turn once again to The People vs The Press.
In some ways, as Nick Cohen has said more eloquently elsewhere, we are arguing over a corpse. The printed press seems doomed, though it may just about see me out, as it were, even allowing me to make it - ie still be writing, not just alive - to the 50th anniversary of my first local newspaper job (1967).
But since journalists and photo-journalists are still being paid to write or take pictures for publication, and others to organise how their words and images appear, it may be worth - even at this late stage - discussing issues that arise.
My friend and former colleague Phil Coburn is a photographer, one of the many fine men and women pursuing that craft with whom I have worked.
At the weekend, after a General Election result I regretted but was hardly a great surprise, he was given fairly uncontroversial instructions by his picture editor.
"I was sent down to Ed Miliband's home by the Mirror," Phil writes at Facebook. "Ed and Justine very graciously posed up for us..."
All well so far? Does anyone capable of joined-up thinking seriously challenge the right, even duty, of the press to monitor the post-electoral words and actions of a defeated frontrunner?
Yes, they do. Everyone pays lip service to the freedom of the press but, like Rigg's character, many don't actually believe in it for a second. Step forward Hacked Off, to some extent Leveson, an army of internet trolls and all those wretched Crown counsel (and the occasional judge) who bayed for the conviction of foot-soldier journalists tried for doing their jobs.
To the eternal credit of a string of brave juries, the judicial part of The People vs The Press has repeatedly ended up with them siding with the journalists in cases brought after mindlessly disproportionate injections of public money into investigation and, often following obscene lapses of time, prosecution. The Crown persists in the odd individual case it believes it might still win, but has otherwise taken a very bloody nose.
Where was I? Oh yes, with Phil Coburn on a north London doorstep.
You will have noted how gracefully Ed consented to be photographed. He will have seen it as a) the decent, professional response and b) an acknowledgement that history would be poorer without record of such moments.
But let's hear Phil out:" "Ed and Justine very graciously posed up for us... despite suggestions to 'leave the poor man alone' and 'go and get a proper job' from some of his neighbours."
Are Ed's neighbours for real? Maybe all those acquitted journalists should be thanking their lucky stars no one living in Ed's street was on their jury.
But what, incidentally, do those neighbours do for a living? Without stooping to the suggestion that they may be no more than a mixture of lawyers, judges, estate agents, bankers, luvvies and spivs, I'd suggest that none of them - health service people apart - is likely to work in a trade or profession that would easily survive, unscathed, Leveson-style scrutiny. Those who had nothing to do with the crass annoyance at the presence of Phil and his confrères/consoeurs are naturally exempt from my remarks.
And Phil Coburn? The weekend's job took him, quite properly in my view, to Ed Miliband's house.
On another day, in another year, his fare from the journalistic taxi rank led him to Afghanistan. There, an explosion killed the reporter working with him (plus a US soldier) and left him, "get-a-proper-job" Phil, very badly injured.
"He lost a foot in the explosion and I am told the leg had to be amputated below the knee," I wrote at the time, just over five years ago.
Phil has undoubtedly suffered worse doorstep moments that he encountered chez Ed. He has endured his misfortune with incredible good spirit. And he was certainly more gracious than I would have been about those insulting him outside Ed's place: "To be honest I can't really blame them as some of the headlines and comment pieces by the mainly right wing press about a thoroughly decent and principled man have been toxic to say the least."
But perhaps at least one Miliband neighbour may care to rephrase the "go and get a proper job" part of the invective.
Phil Coburn, pictured with the Mirror's consent
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