MARTIN McGUINNESS meeting Queen Elizabeth wasn’t the only herald of a new chapter in Northern Ireland’s post-Troubles narrative.
Amid all the hoopla of the royal visit this week, another door was quietly closing on the past – BBC Northern Ireland's premier politics programme, Hearts and Minds, which has been dropped from the schedules after 16 years.
Birthed somewhere between the IRA ceasefire and the Belfast Agreement, it has charted every kink in the peace process, from decommissioning to the devolution of policing and justice.
With a low-maintenance, dated format – studio interviews with local and international politicians, straight-to-camera opinion pieces from commentators and Ian Knox’s brilliant but hardly televisual cartoon drawings – it wasn’t exactly The West Wing in terms of sex appeal but it had an intimacy and an immediacy that appealed to a broad audience.
There was no fancy talk or funky graphics – this was “does what it says on the tin” political programming that didn’t go above anyone’s head.
The viewing figures were never massive – peaking about 100,000 – but they were steady and the programme formed an important staple for politicians, journalists and the North’s sizeable community of political anoraks. It also boasted a surprisingly loyal following south of the Border.
A Cambridge graduate and recreational choral singer, Mr Thompson was no Jeremy Paxman – he lacked the diva element – but it’s probably fair to say that H&M’s longevity owed a debt to his enduring popularity across the religious and class divides.
Speaking to The Irish Timesfrom his home in east Belfast, Thompson said he was "sad to be saying goodbye" to H&M, although he will be taking up a new post presenting the flagship radio programme Good Morning Ulster in the autumn.
With characteristic diplomacy, he declined to be drawn on which interviewees were the most tiresome or the most thrilling but he did repeat – with an undeniable smirk – the anecdote about Mr Trimble telling the show’s longtime producer, Mary Kelly, that his grilling by Thompson represented “the closest I ever came to punching anyone”.
The headiest days Thompson remembered as belonging to the Clinton era.
" Hearts and Mindswould decamp to Washington, along with all of the North's politicians, every St Patrick's Day. There was a sense of the great levers of world power turning towards our wee problem.
“You’d meet diplomats from all over the world. More than one said to me privately, ‘How do you guys manage it? I’ve been trying to get my people into the White House for years, but you lot show up and waltz straight in’.”
Was it the right decision to axe Hearts and Minds, given the outpouring of affection that has greeted the news of its demise?
“Look, 16 years is a damn good run,” Thompson said. I feel lucky to have been a part of it. Nothing lasts forever.”