Seán Moncrieff: The only time I met Gerry Adams he told me he likes to trampoline naked

I’ve met Gerry Adams only once. It was during an outside broadcast with an audience present. We found him to be a curious man. Much of the interview was typical politician stuff, but it took a left turn when he volunteered that, for fun, he likes to bounce on a trampoline in his back garden. While not wearing any clothes. Sometimes his dog joins in.

The audience tittered uncomfortably. No one was sure if he was serious or not.

When the interview ended, we went to a commercial break. He took my hand firmly, pulled me in and whispered: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I’ve no idea what he meant by that.

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[ Seán Moncrieff: I never cry. My generation of men had the tears bred out of us ]

Perhaps he didn’t mean anything. Perhaps the intention behind what he whispered to me and his naked trampoline story was to throw people off; to make it more difficult to get a fix on the sort of man Adams is. That could be the habit of a lifetime, of having to be constantly evasive. Or perhaps he simply felt, after decades of heavy-duty politics, that he deserves a little fun.

I’m not writing this to praise or damn Adams. You probably have your own opinion of him. Yet it is slightly surreal that a man once regarded by most people on this island as somewhat sinister – I’m putting it mildly – is today happy to project an image of cheerful dottiness. It demonstrates how much this island has changed; and how much Adams had to do with it.

It was hugely significant that Adams and McGuinness changed their minds about the use of violence

A few years ago, I went through a phase of reading books about the peace process: the same basic set of facts, but all related from differing points of view. And more than one account described Adams and Martin McGuinness being occasionally nervous, even skittish during the talks, especially at the end when, presumably, the next step was for them was to sell the idea to their own people. They knew there would be resistance to the idea of putting away the guns and bombs; that it might even threaten their own lives.

This is not to cast them as heroes. The decision to turn away from physical force was always presented as pragmatic, not moral. Nor is it an attempt to absolve anyone who may or may not (according to their lawyers) have been a member of the IRA. Yet it was hugely significant that Adams and McGuinness changed their minds about the use of violence.

None of the accounts I read were particularly illuminating as to what brought about that change. Gerry Adams was at the heart of a movement fired by a political aspiration, but also by anger, hatred and a need for revenge. Violence gave the movement agency. Sometimes, it seemed like violence was the whole point.

[ Why do we feel the urge to tell other people what to do? ]

I imagine that while he was trying to sell the Belfast Agreement to other republicans – an agreement that (from the nationalist standpoint) wasn’t as good as Sunningdale in the previous decade – someone must have asked him: then what have we been fighting for? What’s changed? I’d love to know how he answered that question: and what had changed within the movement as a whole to be able to hear it. Was there a weariness? A realisation of futility? Even a sadness?

If there are patterns to history, one of them is that, eventually, all wars end: no matter how implacably opposed the combatants are, or how much they say they will never give up until they get everything they want. And often, the rough shape of the agreements they come to – as with Northern Ireland – had been obvious all along.

That’s both hopeful and depressing. Politicians and generals can give all sorts of logical-sounding reasons as to why violence should continue, thus denying the emotional component: the fury festering in their hearts. Peace will come, but only once the dark need for blood has been spent.