A journalist who Boris Johnson secretly discussed helping a friend [D Guppy] to have beaten up has demanded an apology from the Conservative leadership candidate as he stands on the brink of Downing Street.... the incident [took place] nearly 30 years ago
But fear and vulnerability last for ever, as we know:
the retired reporter said he had been so disturbed by the “Guppygate” incident he had told his wife to be careful answering the front door. While Collier learned of the call long after the fact, he was sufficiently unsettled by the discovery to worry for his family’s safety, he said. The 69-year-old called on Johnson to apologise to him and his wife over the incident, which he said had left her frightened at home with their then young son, Ross.
Egging the pudding, and relying on, possibly even exploiting, memories of 30 years ago:
Collier’s wife, Jennifer, 64, a lifelong Conservative voter, also urged Johnson to say sorry. “He should be accountable for the things that he’s done. I think it’s disgraceful behaviour,” she said...“These people seem to think they don’t have to live by the same moral standards as the rest of us. They think because they went to Eton they don’t have to be answerable to things, and I just think his moral compass is way off the scale.”...Jennifer Collier, a former nurse who works for a charity, [can't get much more virtuous than that] said the couple had only recently moved into their home at the time and had not known many people...“So it was quite worrying [wrong terminology] to be told: ‘Don’t answer the door unless you recognise somebody,’ because I didn’t recognise anybody. Stuart was away at work all day, used to leave half seven in the morning, get back at eight o’clock at night. So I was in this house on my own with a toddler,” she said.
Questioned about the tape by Eddie Mair in 2013, Johnson said: “Yes, it was certainly true that he was in a bit of a state, and I did humour him in a long phone conversation, from which absolutely nothing eventuated and … you know, there you go. But I think if any of us had our phone conversations bugged, they might, you know … people say all sorts of fantastical things while they’re talking to their friends.”
In an accompanying piece, Collier says:
After the tape emerged, Collier said, he was interviewed by a police officer. “By that time I knew that there was a plot to find me,” Collier recalled. “But I didn’t want to get involved in pressing any charges. I just really wanted to get on with my life. Fortunately, nothing came of Guppy’s threats or Boris’s involvement.”... He does not regret his decision not to take it further with police at the time and has no plans to now...Collier, who left the NoW in the late 1990s, long before the hacking scandal exposed by the Guardian culminated in the newspaper’s closure in 2011, said: “Naturally, as a NoW reporter, I did a lot of stories where people wanted revenge on me
It's the old problem with activist journalism here.This is so transparently strategic and connected to the Graun's campaign to expose 'the real Boris Johnson' (the subheading on the second item,and the subject of a heavy-handed jokey quiz, offering the options 'gaff prone or arch schemer') that the impact of the actual story is diluted.It is just far too easy to see Collier and the Guradian exploiting their own past injuries in a rather cynical way.
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