Now, it seems strange to think I never will meet the man whose presence dominated my life for many years, the man whose face is on a meathook for posterity thanks to me, the man whom I have no doubt celebrated my arrest and trial and snorted at my innocence.

Oh, I was in the same room as him on a number of occasions. He may not have been the tallest of men but he had a presence.

People wanted to talk to him, to feel important enough for him to acknowledge their lowly existence.

I found that circus of adoration pathetic. More than that, it was dangerous.

There really was no government when he was taoiseach;

there was Charlie.

It was 1991 and I was working for Granada Television's World in Action. Our programme on the beef industry had been months in preparation. The focus of our attention was the meat company Goodman International, but our investigations increasingly began to include mention of Haughey. Even when we weren't looking for him in the story, he would make a guest appearance.

He had more fingers in more pies than he had fingers; this wasn't networking, this was supremacy. Slowly as we dug away, a picture of an alien Ireland began to emerge, a land with an alien language of slush funds, offshore accounts, midnight money transfers, bagmen and cronies.

And of course, the golden circles. There wasn't just one golden circle, although Haughey's was obviously the most influential. Anyone who was anyone had one. They varied only in their complexity, ambition and efficiency. One company had a bagman in Northern Ireland who literally drove south every week with a bag of cash, distributing it to the people on his list, the latest cronies. I know because he told me. One leading accountancy firm had a so-called 'cooking floor' where the 'manufacturing' of appropriate company accounts was carried out. I know because someone working there told me. And one businessman did indeed tell me about Charlie's circle. He told me because he was part of it, and somehow couldn't resist displaying his ranking in the world.

Of course, Haughey had always been controversial, not least because of the cloud of perjury remaining after the 1970 arms trial, and he was of constant interest to the media. But the idea that powerful men in business and politics might collude to run a private fiefdom, complete with private jets and chauffeur-driven limos, was no more than a notion in 1991, a notion that nobody was prepared to believe.

So when the World in Action programme was transmitted, there was outrage that we had hung Haughey's picture on a meathook and said he was close to Goodman International's boss Larry Goodman . . . the wealthiest man in Ireland at the time. He was the taoiseach; how dare we show such disrespect? Splutter, splutter.

Publicly, Haughey was not impressed with the meathook. Privately, I think that he laughed at us.

He laughed because he knew we were close. He also knew we weren't close enough. We knew a lot at that point, and leads were building into leads.

People were becoming a bit braver and wanted to talk. But it was clear that investigating the wheelings and dealings of CJH merited a programme in its own right.

In early December 1991, I started work on such a programme. It was a mammoth task, even with the information I had gathered during the first film. Trying to keep a low profile and talk about Haughey was difficult . . . there are only so many underground car parks to meet in and they're mighty cold in mid-winter.

But one story would be central to the investigation, a story which had originally been hinted to me a full five years earlier, a story which we believed merited further digging. An influential wealthy overseas businessman was keen to further his investments in Ireland. He was involved in a tender for a big prestige project and was used to receiving visitors from Ireland to his plush offices. A man came one day and explained that he had been sent specially by Haughey to have a private chat.

There was the matter of money to be settled before any tender could be approved, not the price tag of the tender but the private payment. The businessman was outraged and demanded to know what the money was for. He was told that some of it would find its way to fund Republican activities, while the remainder was likely to be offshored. He refused to pay and lost the tender.

I went through this story many times. It stayed the same. The details did not change. The identity of the visitor was revealed, down to what he was wearing and who else was in the room at that meeting. Most importantly, the businessman was prepared to go on the record.

Of course, my task then was to test the veracity of the story. I started my haul through the long grass, but came to a sudden halt the night in January 1992 when Sean Doherty came out of the same long grass and finally pulled Haughey from his throne.

World in Action cancelled the piece.

Rightly, they had no interest in the story once Haughey was a 'has-been' taoiseach. I folded away my notebooks and moved on.

I can't say if the story I was told was true. Nor do I know whether by then Haughey knew we were getting uncomfortably close. He was gone and I was left facing the music of an arrest and a trial . . . ultimately for telling the truth. It was a sharp reminder of where the power lay.

We know the rest. We saw the Haughey reputation end in tatters, but we know he never really faced the symphony he deserved. His secrets will remain secrets. For me the greatest offence was not the corruption or the coercion but something more fundamental than that.

Charles Haughey was green to the marrow. He never apologised for it; he gloried in it. As long as he was wrapped in his designer flag of emerald, no one could doubt his love of Ireland and his dedication to its welfare.

Anyone questioning his bona fides would encourage his finely tuned wrath, otherwise known as a string of abuse.

It was the perfect disguise . . . the ultimate trick . . . to use his very public love of Ireland to allow him to leach it and line his own very extensive pockets.

When I first set out on my investigations, many many people I approached tried to persuade me to stop "for the good of Ireland".

They were part of the Haughey culture, and my silence would have allowed the culture of greed, which he had created and condoned, to continue. Fifteen years later, I am proud that I was not part of that culture and pleased that I contributed to its downfall.