I want to apologise: I have let myself down. I let others down too, and I’m sorry. Not because, Matt Hancock-style, I breached social distancing guidelines with a steamy office affair — but because I missed the scoop. I was sent a compromising picture of the then health secretary and his mistress almost a week before the Sun newspaper sensationally revealed their relationship — and I did not believe it was him.
Having never knowingly undersold my ability to break big stories, this is embarrassing to say the least. Over the years, my scoops have led variously to the jailing of a cabinet minister (Chris Huhne); the resignation of the UK’s ambassador to Washington (Sir Kim Darroch); awkward ‘questions to answer’ for William Hague (after I revealed the married former Tory party leader was sharing a hotel bedroom with a young male aide); the embarrassment of Prince Andrew, when I obtained a cache of his emails; and yes, that notorious story about a prime minister and a pig. (Say what you like, but only the shock departure of teen heartthrob Zayn Malik from the band One Direction attracted more tweets and memes that year.)
So how did I miss this one? Here’s what happened. On the morning of 20 June I was leafing through the Sunday newspapers when I received a message from an important contact. ‘Good morning. This might brighten your day, I have a guy who says he has incriminating footage of Matt Hancock,’ he wrote breezily. Accompanying the text was a grainy image, no bigger than a postage stamp, of a man in a suit, leaning forward to embrace a raven-haired woman in a figure-hugging dress. ‘What to do next?’ the message asked.
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