Johann Hari and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, so I was surprised when he called and asked me to meet him at his bijou New York apartment. I was particularly surprised as he blocked me on Twitter and I live in Dublin which made the travel quite inconvenient. Eighteen hours later, I was in New York, clutching a bouquet of carnations and a small picture of Elton John as Johann had requested. 

As he opened the door, he looked just as I had expected: an extra from the unmade Molesworth feature film, the stunt double for Fortherington-Thomas, peering up at me with his big doe eyes. Those eyes were already welling up as he swung open the door. He started talking without any prompting. Luckily I had turned on my recorder in the hallway. 

“I’d like to thank the Independent for the privilege of working for them over the past nine years, and for offering my job back,” he said, staring at the floor with a studied look of contrition. “But after nearly six months living in New York City and plenty of time to reflect, I’ve decided to not take them up on their kind offer.” 

“But why…” I began to say. “There are two reasons!” he declaimed, jumping up from the sofa and walking to the window where he stared forlornly at the New York skyline. “I’m willing to take the flack for my errors myself; when you screw up, you should pay the price. But I’m not willing to see other people…” He caught himself. “To see other people, who played no part in those errors and are unimpeachably decent people, take the flack.” 

He stalked across to his small desk and waved a copy of the newspaper at me. The print was smudged from tears and the crossword was filled in with his own name over and over again. I noticed he had not even attempted the Sudoku. “The Independent has been great to me,” he said, “But the thing is Mic – and I wanted to say this to you personally – we need its principles in the public arena without distractions.” 

I was stunned by his honesty. “But what will you do next Johann? How will we cope without your excoriating honesty at the heart of the British commentariat?” He blushed. “I’ve started working on a book on a subject I believe is important and requires urgent action,” he said waving what looked like someone else’s book entirely. “Isn’t that by Noam Chomsky?”, I asked. 

He seemed to ignore me, caught up in his own thoughts. “To do this properly needs international travel and the kind of in depth focus that’s not possible when you’re writing a heavily researched column at the same time.” “Oh did you do those?” I asked politely. His look hardened but he ploughed on: “I’ll be writing occasional articles elsewhere but I’ll be mainly delving deeply into one subject for now.” What could it be I wondered? 

I tried to stop staring at a well-thumbed copy of the Beano that lay on his coffee table. “So what next, Johann?” I asked with the kindly voice of the good-hearted columnist and saviour of journalism that I am. “I’ll continue to be a loyal reader and supporter of the Independent,” he said softly, grabbing my hand to emphasise his point. “It is one of the world’s great newspapers. It is. It is. It is.” 

“I must be going now, Johann,” I said, removing my hand from his grip, suddenly remembering his harrowing tales of seducing Nazis. I feared the epaulettes on my coat may be too much for him. “I feel privileged to have been part of it all these years,” he said, a single tear trickling down his cheek. I backed slowly out of the door and went on my way, promising only to recount this true tale to my loyal readers. It’s what he would want.