"And with us here this evening on BBC Five, we have Gerry Adams to talk about his book, his second since he embarked upon the peaceful Sinn Féin civil rights campaign in the 1970s. Tell us Gerry, why did you start this campaign?"
"I think it was after RAF Bomber Command used Divis Flats for target practice, machine-gunning the survivors running up the Falls Road, that I began to realise something was not quite right in Northern Ireland. You see, real human rights for Northern Ireland Catholics - the vote, the dole, the right to buy property, that kind of thing - didn't exist."
"What? You mean you didn't have the vote?"
"No, if you were a Catholic in Northern Ireland in those days, you were allowed nothing. Nothing. The pass-laws confined the entire Catholic population to a few pigsties on the Falls Road. Every second Catholic male had to be handed over to the Stormont Government to be raised as a Protestant. All subsequent sons were castrated. Unionist MPs had the right to deflower Catholic girls on their 16th birthday, and any offspring were raised as Protestants. Catholics who protested were beaten to death. They were hard times. But I decided on a campaign of peaceful protest. So I got together a petition, in secret, of course, because Catholics were not allowed to write.
"You weren't allowed to write?"
"That's right. Pens and paper were only allowed to Protestants. It was illegal even to sell toilet paper to Catholics. We weren't allowed education. The only thing you could lawfully teach a Catholic was how to sweep a street or scrub a Protestant back. So I got this petition together, asking very politely for the Stormont government to end the practice of beheading priests and nuns as half-time entertainment whenever Linfield played at home. They'd use a mother superior's head for the second half - Loreto, if possible. Rounder, apparently.
"That's what got me in real trouble. I had to go on the run, living on my wits, always campaigning for peaceful change, but never in the same place for two consecutive nights. The British government began to blow up Belfast, trying to eliminate safe places where I was hiding. They blew the Abercorn Restaurant apart, thinking I was having coffee there. They blew up Protestant pubs, on the hunch I might be there. I have many good friends in the Protestant community, you know. They launched a wave of terror attacks which we now know as Bloody Friday.
"Oh this is shocking."
"They blew Claudy apart, because the British assumed I was hiding there. Sinn Féin was desperate to stop this violence, but we couldn't, because we had no control over the British war machine, which was running amok. The people began disappearing, and we couldn't stop it. Mad things happened. Have you ever heard of La Mon house?" "No. Tell us about it"
"You haven't? Well, it was where the British government burned to death all these Catholics who'd gathered to complain about their children being turned into dog-food for Queen Elizabeth's corgis. I said, we've got to stop these killings by the British. I called together a conference of Sinn Féin peace activists, and I said, we've got to talk the British into seeing the futility of fighting this war against us. Some of them said it was hopeless, that the British would never learn.
"And it certainly looked that way. They were so addicted to violence that they bombed some pubs in Birmingham, just because some Irish people drank there. And of course, they wanted to blame us, so they made it look like us, though we are an entirely non-violent organisation. So there was the Mullaghmore bombing, which was done by the British, as was the M62 bus bombing, which killed 11 people, including the entire Houghton family of four - Lee, aged five, and Robert aged two, and their two parents.
"Have you heard of the Houghtons? Of course you haven't, have you? You haven't because you're a dolt or a cretin or a coward. What is it about the media these days that they only send wimps or fools to interview me? I say what I like and they simper and grovel and cringe and writhe in their own pool of spittle. God, it's worse than dispiriting. It's disgusting. The Irish interviews on radio, television and in the press have been disgraceful enough - craven, ignorant, ill-informed, simpering and utterly abject, ah Gerry this and ah Gerry that, fawn, fawn, fawn. But they're nothing - nothing - compared with the interviews with British newspapers.
"These are worse because they're so po-faced and respectful. I can say utter gibberish to those clowns, any palpably absurd fiction - oh, you know, such as the IRA never targeted civilians - and they instantly agree with me, usually rolling over on their backs, and howling their apologies for 800 years of oppression."
"I'm sorry."
"STOP SAYING YOU'RE SORRY!"
"Sorry."
"If these people hold life so sacred, as they pretend to, why don't they go to the trouble of finding out something about the thousands of people who died, before they ask questions of people like me? Why don't they spend just a couple of minutes reading the history of the Troubles? Or is it that they know their history, but are just too scared to ask the right questions? Are they terrified of the knock on the door from a man in a mask? I hope they are. Because if that's so, it tells me one thing."
"What's that, sire?"
"We've won."