I met him when he won a darts competition Press Gazette ran in 2007 as part of a commercial tie-up with Ladbrokes. He seemed like a thoroughly nice guy – very far from the snarling tabloid hack of the public imagination.

It was a travesty that Clive Goodman was locked up in Belmarsh in 2007 alongside murderers and rapists for what was a gross invasion of privacy, but no more. And it would be a huge over-reaction if more journalists suffered out of proportion punishments because of widespread anger over the perception that News International has been involved in a cover-up over phone-hacking.