It's fair to say that it's a competitive business. It's fair so say that we're competitive people and that I'm a competitive person. But I'd like to think that my own competitive instincts don't blind me personally to going about my job with ...

I understand that that's an issue that you're grappling with in your intention to perhaps formulate some sort of a mechanism whereby a situation like this happens again. I understand that. What I would say is this: we don't often go wrong, we don't often make ...

What you're saying to me is a given. I can't argue with that because the courts have ruled on that. We're bound by that and that's something that we have to take into account in the future.

As you know, we've been found to be in contempt of count.

Yes, but you've seen a different account via emails that came into the Daily Mirror office. I have no access to --

I think this pupil didn't come to us in isolation. There were other pupils who either spoke to us directly or spoke to news agencies that were working the story or they were quoted at length in other newspapers. The content in this story chimed with what we were ...

He did.

Again, these were the recollections of one of his former pupils. I don't know Mr Jefferies personally. I did meet him twice down there in quick succession, but once again, these are the honest recollections. The transcript is there. You have the transcript and I hope you'll agree ...

I think, looking back on that now, the gentleman contacted us. I don't think he used the term "academic obsession"; I think he was quite straightforward and he just said "an obsession with death", and perhaps we were trying to qualify it by pointing out that this was not ...

I have it before me.

Okay.

I'm not saying it was or it wasn't. It's just a year on, I can't give you an honest answer, but I'm sure we'll endeavour to get you one.

Yes. Now, with contempt of court, there are various legal nuances, there are shifting interpretations, shifting applications with those announces, and I take the view, not unreasonably, that there are people at my newspaper, lawyers, who were better able than me to make judgment calls on that and I defer ...

No, I don't move in those circles. I'm a general news reporter and there was a group of three or four general news reporters on the ground in Bristol at that time. I was one of them. We worked together every day, I guess, as a co-op of ...

I'm not a crime reporter.

I don't have my original copy as I filed it to London, so looking back a year on, I can't tell you whether I chose that particular word myself. Perhaps we can make enquiries at the office to see if that copy is available as I filed it ...

I was in Bristol at the time. Those are decisions that would have been made in London and I was geographically divorced from that decision-making.

Yes. Once again, the headline is the verbatim quote from the gentleman who contacted us and a decision was made by a subeditor in the office or the editor of the day that that was what they were going to use for the headline. I don't have any input ...

Tab 2. Yes, I have it in front of me now, yes.

As I said to you a few moments ago, we've accepted the fact that our coverage of this story should have been more neutral and dispassionate. We made a libel settlement with Mr Jefferies and I believe that's an acknowledgment of the fact that we -- our presentation should ...

Yes, that's what I say.

He was looking back, this was his memory, and as I've acknowledged, it's not a very flattering memory but I guess at the same time it's probably not unusual for a pupil sometimes to look back on whatever teachers they had ...

The "obsessed with death", as you can see there from the memo and from the transcript which we've provided to you is -- that's a verbatim quote from this gentleman. That was his mature recollection, looking back on his memories of Mr Jefferies.

I never said there was anything objectionable about a teacher showing an historical film on the Holocaust on the pupils. What we did was -- this pupil was giving his memories of Mr Jefferies, who was his teacher. His memories were not always flattering. They were not always kind. A decision ...

Yes, I have it here in front of me.

You're almost correct. What actually happened was the transcript was drawn -- the full transcript was shown just more recently for the benefit here of the Inquiry. My colleague, Caroline Grant, who carried out the interview, just produced the memo, as such, the memorandum, and she extracted from the taped ...

Yes, that's correct.

That is correct, yes.

Gary Timothy O'Shea.