As soon as Haughey became Leader of Fianna Fail, therefore, the word went out to front benchers and back benchers alike: put not a foot in Carr Communications. It didn't actually stop them coming, of course. It just meant that they came at odd hours and parked their cars around the back.

Then Dr John O'Connell left the Labour Party and joined Fianna Fail. O'Connell understood media as an insider, having founded and edited the phenomenally-successful Irish Medical Times. He started to nag Haughey about Fianna Fail's rotten media image in the wake of outbreaks of GUBU, and to talk to me about the same problem. I'd been a friend since working on Dr John's campaign to become an MEP . . . the first political campaign I'd ever been involved in.

"He has to come out to you, " Dr John kept telling me.

"Two chances, John, " was the usual response.

"If he asked you to go out to Kinsealy, would you go?"

"Sure. But he won't."

One Saturday morning, Dr John rang about 9am.

"Do you remember you said you'd go to Kinsealy if Mr Haughey asked you to?"

"Yes?"

"Well, he's asked me to ask you."

"Oh. When?"

"Now. I'll pick you up in half an hour."

An hour later, I was making my way with difficulty (on crutches because of an accident) across the hall carpet (gift of Colonel Gadaffi) in the beautiful Gandon home of the Haughey's, headed for Mr Haughey's small study. Tea was served in paper-thin china. Haughey sat behind a mahogany desk, Dr John and I in chairs at the other side. Haughey invited me to discuss the recent media appearances of his front bench. As I talked, he began to move the big chair sideways, then more sideways, until he was in profile, facing away from me. I faltered.

"You're depressing me, " he growled.

"Well, at least you're getting it for free, " I said.

At this point Dr John rose to his feet and delivered himself of an impassioned statement on the importance of electronic media (although he didn't call them that) and expatiated on recent overseas examples of politicians felled because they would not pay attention to, or learn the rules of radio and television. Haughey watched him in silence, his chin tucked into his neck so that he was looking up from under his eyelids. His small pale hands fiddled with items on the desk. When John finished, Haughey looked at him in silence, then rose and, without a word, led us both to the front door. There, he thanked us for our time and off we went. I told John I was sorry I'd wrecked his chances of getting Fianna Fail camera-friendly, but that if Haughey wanted to be told wafflers weren't wafflers, Carr Communications wasn't a great place to start. John beamed knowingly and said he'd be back to me. He was. Two days later, a pilot course for front benchers was booked in.

In the event, the course had to be cancelled because of a three-line whip in Dail Eireann. On the day when it had been supposed to happen, however, the Evening Press ran a column announcing that FF was sending its top bods up to us to be taught how to smile and say "I'm glad you asked me that question." We seethed and shrugged.

In the middle of a crowded open office the following day, conversation was halted when Tom Savage, on the phone, was heard to say, fiercely: "Just one minute, Mr Haughey. I'll not take that from you or from any man."

Haughey had telephoned and re-booked the course.

"And could we have confidentiality this time?"

he barked.

Tom told him he could look to his own people for the source of the newspaper leak, that Carr Communications didn't leak. Ever. Haughey asked why he should believe that.

"Very simple, " Tom told him. "Three of your front-benchers, despite your ban on Carr Communications, come to us for coaching regularly.

You don't know who they are, and you'll never know . . . from us."

Haughey grumbled his parting and the frontbenchers duly arrived. They included Maire Geoghegan Quinn, Michael Noonan (the Fianna Fail version) and Padraig Flynn. The course went well until Flynn got ticked off by Tom as a "verbal terrorist". I figured that as Haughey's selfproclaimed gauleiter, the big Mayoman would go straight out to Kinsealy and tell the boss to reinstate his ban. In fact, Flynn went straight out to Kinsealy and told the boss to a) send all TDs on the course and b) to undergo media training himself.

Kitchen-sink interviews Haughey came for his first media training session late in the evening, accompanied by Dr John. In studio, I did a half-hour interview with him. A "kitchen-sink" interview: everything got thrown, including Colonel Gadaffi's carpet and Terry Keane. (It should be remembered that this was at least 22 years ago, when the Keane affaire was not known even to his son, Sean. ) At the end of the interview, he was good and mad. After I thanked him, the cameras continued to record as he leaned across, grasped me by the knee and told me I was a rude bitch. It was said half-furiously, half-appreciatively.

The tape was rewound, a pot of weak tea brought, and assessment began. Haughey was initially defensive, resentfully predicting what criticisms I would make. Once he copped on that assessment isn't the same as criticism, he became fascinated by it, curious about what distinguished the written from the spoken word and intrigued by the need to be singular and specific, rather than general and conceptual. He questioned everything, making occasional notes.

He was engaged, insightful, observant and funny, using his own videotape as a case study through which to explore the dynamic of a TV interview.

Inevitably, a good mind presented with tangible evidence in such a situation has to either dig in or move. Haughey moved . . . reluctantly but not slowly . . . from a view of TV interviewers as enemies motivated by spite, personal ambition and Sticky affiliation to a view of them as seeking to provide something vitally interesting and memorable for their viewers: a position which allows an interviewee to contribute positively, rather than go on the run, verbally. He left in high good humour.

At seven o'clock the following morning, the phone in the office rang. It was the start of a pattern. Haughey would ask for help. It might be in preparation for a TV or radio programme. Then he would do the programme and would telephone first thing the following morning to thank whoever had worked with him and discuss . . .

with ruthless self-assessment . . . precisely what he had managed to achieve and where he had failed. Not only was he generous . . . always recalling the detail of the remembered advice and how it had worked . . . but he took responsibility when things didn't work. That happened once in a Leaders' Debate, and once in an ardfheis.

The Leaders' Debate was with FitzGerald. In the dry run, Haughey was stunningly impressive in his grasp of every area of government policy, but so impatient that he wasn't waiting for the end of questions. I told him that if he didn't listen and listen forensically, he was going to come unstuck.

"If you answer a question that hasn't been asked, you're going to look like you're evading the question that has been asked, " I said.

He went down to RTE and I went home to watch the programme. Halfway through, FitzGerald found a document in one of his pockets (his difficulty finding the bit of paper was classic Garret, great television and visibly irritating to Haughey) and made an accusation. Confusion ensued, with Haughey snapping at the wrong end of the stick.

Furious, I stopped watching and went to bed.

About an hour later, the phone rang and after a few minutes, my husband arrived in the bedroom.

"That was Mr Haughey, " he said. "He said to tell you he was sorry. That you'd warned him about not listening. And to thank you for your help."

Shooting the messenger The second time he could have blamed the helper was when I rewrote an ardfheis speech for him. Dr Martin Mansergh wrote the bulk of this and all of Haughey's speeches, but gracefully permitted his prose to be translated into language more amenable to broadcast requirements. I shortened sentences, created emotional "builds" and cut more than a third of the original. The deletions created a small war among the advisors who came to watch Haughey rehearsing the autocued script. That bit about China had to go back in. Bord na Mona couldn't be left out. The grassroots would want to hear the section that had been removed from page 6f Haughey listened silently to all of the comments and then nodded at me: speak.

"If you give yourself the space to deliver it well, you're guaranteed nine points of applause, " I said.

"Adding the time for that applause to the length of what you've just delivered will make the speech ten minutes too long."

He made one small gesture and that was the end of it: the cuts stayed cut.

The only problem was that I had under-estimated the impact of the speech. It got 13, not nine, sustained bouts of applause, which ran it into the RTE news bulletin. Or would have, if RTE hadn't cut it off just as he was reaching the peroration. At home, I watched the nine o'clock news graphics swimming across the screen with a sinking heart. Fianna Fail HQ would be livid.

(They were. ) They would attack RTE. (They did. ) They would rightly blame me.

Fifteen minutes into the bulletin, our phone rang. Haughey. I apologised. He rubbished any need for apology, said he was proud of the speech and had wanted to ring me immediately to thank me for my work on it.

As time went on, our relationship with Haughey divided along clear lines. If he wanted to be prepped for a TV programme or helped with a speech, I was called. If he wanted to discuss policy or simply have a chat over a cup of tea in Kinsealy, Tom was chosen.

Partly because he liked the way Tom analysed issues. Partly because he knew Tom wasn't afraid of him. Charlie Haughey surrounded himself with people who were afraid of him, but loved the company of those who weren'tf On one occasion, Tom was working with a group in the Mount Street Headquarters of Fianna Fail when Haughey arrived, very courteously asking permission to interrupt the session. Tom stood back. Haughey told the group he had just made senators of two members of the party. The group applauded.

"That makes you the modern equivalent of Caligula, " Tom said, turning to resume the meeting.

"I'm not familiar with the classical reference, " Haughey responded.

"Caligula made his horse a consul, " Tom told him. "Making those two senators is roughly the same thing."

The group sat frozen. Haughey sat silent.

Then he roared laughing. And then . . . only then . . . the group laughed, too.

It was a chilling echo of the moment in A Man For All Seasons where Henry VIII, leaping from his boat, lands up to his knees in silt. The courtiers on the boat stand in terrified silence as he glares at them, daring them to disrespect him by as much as a snigger. Then the monarch decides to find the incident funny, throwing back his magnificent head in laugher. The courtiers all copy, not only his laughter, but his leap into the mud, as well: they jump off the boat and splash about in the filth.

Charles Haughey was a medieval monarch out of time, defining the mood of his courtiers and through them the mood of the nation. To work with him as a visiting expert on communications was akin to being the music-teacher to a monarch who loved music: you achieved a transient trust, a shared pleasure in the task uncomplicated by expectations of favours.

It also allowed you to wonder, from a distance, at how a man of such intellectual and personality power could so mis-direct both. In which context, another quotation from A Man for All Seasons applies. It's where Thomas More is warning his intemperate son-in-law against reckless pursuit of objectives.

"This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws, not God's laws, " More tells Roper. "And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it) do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"