“When I was there, there was one British policeman and 150 federal Nigerian police for the whole area, and there was no trouble. They’re pious Moslems, but they liked having a good time and enjoyed life. People got on well together.”

What went wrong? “Corruption. It’s sucking resources out of the north to places like Lagos in the south. Also, the population has trebled. So … masses of young people, with little chance of making much of their lives.”

A mild-mannered elderly man (Nigeria became independent in 1960), he is distressed at the violence. He still reads and listens to the news in the Hausa language – “unfortunately they speak rather fast and the words have changed since I was there.”

He doubts where the riot police and armoured cars sent by the Federal Government will do much good. “In my day, we ruled with a light touch. We had to. We had no means of doing otherwise.”

He seems slightly surprised he got away with it.

- A series typically takes 3 years to make and is costly: the BBC pays half and other TVs the rest.
- Based on interviews with protagonists, they aim to show how the closed-doors decisions in major political events were made.
- A good time to tackle an event is when many of the protagonists are out of power writing their memoirs.
- The politicians who come across best are those who are good story-tellers.
- Do the interviewees ever complain? “Only that we didn’t use enough of what they said.”
- How do you get the politicians to tell good stories? “I ask them to tell it as they did to the person they were negotiating with.”
- “We only broadcast what we believe is true. We don’t use obvious lies.”
- How do you know? “Either another politician corroborates it, or our researchers check it out.”

Previous series have covered Gorbachev, the break-up of Yugoslavia, Milosevic and American hostages in Iran. The BBC can attract big audiences, secure sizeable funding, and persuade world leaders to talk. That’s the drawing power of a broadcaster which has built its reputation carefully over decades. Worth learning how to do it.

Travelling on the continent over the past month, I asked a German businessman, a Spanish tourist resort manager, some Italian cultural officials and a group of Slovenian professionals whether they feared the currency they used could collapse. All replied firmly they expected no such thing. They found the question surprising.

Of course it is hard really to believe the promises printed on the banknotes of any currency. However the currency remains viable if people at least behave as if the promises were trustworthy. For that reason, I believe the euro is in no real danger.

But there’s more to it than that. Timothy Corsellis had decided he was a conscientious objector before the war broke out, so volunteering to fight as a pilot implied challenging his innermost beliefs.

After being assigned to train as a bomber pilot, Timothy asked to be switched to fighter training as he could not countenance indiscriminate pattern-bombing of civilians. Flying fighters would scarcely have put him at any less risk, and he would have still served his country in the front line at the height of the battle.

In response, the RAF gave him an “honourable discharge” and he was set to the lowly civilian task of ferrying military aircraft from one place to another. On one of these flights, his plane stalled and he dived into the ground.

On television, his role as a war hero was presented simplistically. I find him even more admirable knowing that he had to conquer his conscience first, endure rejection by his own side, and then give up his life for his country all the same.

A year before he died, at the height of the Battle of Britain, Timothy Corsellis wrote:

The faces at the window
Smiled back ‘goodbye’
Blood coursing in my breast
Told me it was the last time.
‘Good-bye’ they spoke, and I
“Never again or God knows when”
Death, a word of empty meaning
Comes to pluck me from a great and happy past
Into a vapid future
For life in this twentieth century knows no present
Life moves too fast.

The expert valued the manuscripts at £8,000, but no publisher has ever brought his poems out, even though they are well known in literary circles. It is time for a change of heart. They are part of our cultural heritage, forged at a dramatic moment in history.

The treaty’s declared purpose is to reinforce fiscal responsibility. Is that really something we should prevent? Protect the City of London? Maybe that’s worthwhile, but possibly also not. Remember 2008.

Doubtless this could also be achieved by normal diplomacy. Instead, Britain offers only the sharp elbows of the cocksure bully.

Having lived on various countries on the continent, I have become used to moving easily among peoples of different nationalities, languages and histories, finding common ground and common values with no great difficulty. In Britain, I regret that emotional xenophobes with fringe-island opinions are to the fore.

I’m proud to be British, but I don’t subscribe to the assumption that only Britons can be right. I’m British, but ashamed of the rude arrogance of those who represent me. I’m British, and very much European too.

I’m with the 26.

A few choice views from the oracle, as conveyed by Tom:

- The Economist makes 70% of its revenue from subscriptions and 30% from advertising. It is profitable on subscriptions alone. In five years, he expects the ratio to move to 80:20 or even 90:10.

- The Economist employs 75 full-time journalists – the New York Times some 1,200.

- The Economist’s processing of news can be described as “sift, crunch, pack.”

- Economist journalists now write news in two ways: one for print and the other as blogs. Blogs can test ideas for the weekly print edition, since they attract feedback.

- In the digital age, publication of an article is no longer the end of the process. It is the beginning.

- Impartiality is venerated in America, where local newspapers have a monopoly and don’t want to antagonise part of their readers. The trend is for an openly expressed point of view to be accepted. “Transparency is the new objectivity.”

- Digital publishing of newspapers is not always more profitable than print: advertising in print editions does not necessarily migrate to digital versions.

- Apps have an advantage over web sites in providing news, in that consumers feel they are getting the whole news, not just bits and pieces.

- There is no single new business model for news, but for digital metered paywalls are promising – the reader gets a few news articles per month free, then has to pay.

I doubt whether all that much will change in the long run, nor should it. Britain has laws protecting both privacy and free speech. The tension between the two has existed ever since people gathered round the village pump and chatted.

Hacking into telephones of victims of crime does seem outrageous. At the same time, a glance at popular media web sites shows some celebrities pretending to be enjoying private moments clearly pose for paparazzi to attract attention, adding sexual titillation to make it captivating. Likewise, media headlines every day reveal attempts by governments and corporations to manipulate and cover up. So we may regret more controls.

Can anything be done? Baroness Onora O’Neill, the lecturer, suggested journalists should have to reveal publicly the extent to which they use covert methods to collect information. No betraying of sources, just a cataloguing of their practices. I am not sure what benefits this would have brought when I was a foreign correspondent behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War. But generally transparency is welcome.

I suggest mobile telephone companies should also be regulated to force them to make their phones more secure. In the digital age, this is unlikely to be absolute. But banks have generally been able to keep ahead of the criminals in e-banking, so why not mobile phone makers?

Lastly, people having a tough time with journalists could make more use of professional media coaching. This is not foolproof, but can allay fears and restore confidence. For people with few resources, perhaps the state could even provide this for free, in the same way as it offers psychological counselling to victims of crimes of violence.

The euro clearly is in trouble, and efforts of European leaders to manage the crisis are not impressive. British media pour scorn on them and it is taken for granted Britain is better out of it. Maybe, but only maybe. Britain has rising unemployment, 5% inflation, no economic growth, faltering exports, a very weak currency and persistently huge budget deficits. So misgovernment rules on the island too, perhaps even a little more.

The European Union was built on slow consensus-building from the start. That is what made it successful. Disparate peoples were not forced to accept more than they were comfortable with. So the European Union finds it difficult to reach decisions all subscribe to. Democracy prevails, not the smack of firm government, but that is not necessarily bad.

Rather than longing for a quick and final solution, I prefer to watch the process as an experiment which is charting new waters. I am fascinated by the debates over austerity v. pump-priming, price stability v. printing money,  supranational v. local fiscal discipline, and who eventually calls the tune. Unable to know infallibly which way to jump on most of these issues, I sit and learn by watching what goes on.

Eventually, I see Germany’s qualities of hard work, thrift and efficiency coming to the fore. He who pays the piper calls the tune. An impeccably pacifist Germany holding more sway over the way we run our economies seems not a bad prospect.

I forecast the euro will stay, and in 10 years time will be used by more states than now. You read it here first.

By the way, the best internet coverage of the euro crisis is by the Neue Zuercher Zeitung www.nzz.ch. The Swiss can take their distance, not belonging to the EU, but they are sitting right there in the middle and keep their ears close to the ground.  OK, it’s in German …

She brought his campaign medals down with him, and told him:

“When they stand for the two minutes silence, you don’t have to get up. You can just place your hand on your medals.”

Which he did.

He had tears in his eyes when he told me later.