Another good friend from that time was the author of Who's Who in Ireland, Maureen Cairnduff. However, she did not wish to speak about her former friend this week. "We were at each other's weddings, even though we don't talk now. My feeling is that it is her business what she does - I'm not saying I approve of it, but it is her business."
Former Sunday World journalist Micheline McCormack has known Terry for over 25 years. She describes her as a friend capable of great generosity. She says she is fed up with the people who have been portraying her as a dreadful influence on Haughey. "Terry could have made a lot of money writing a book while Charlie was taoiseach but she did not."
McCormack tells two stories to illustrate both sides of the Terry Keane she knows. The first was her "incredible" care and concern for fashion designer Peter Fitzsimons, who died in the late 1980s after a long illness. The second story relates to a weekend in Ballinskelligs, when Terry decided that she wanted to hold a "large banquet" in what was a "rented, functional house". She invited around 25 people but did nothing about the preparations. The work fell to Micheline and Terry's daughter, Madeleine.
"We were frantic. Terry came in and saw me on my knees cleaning the bathroom and simply laughed. One of the other guests cooked chickens and we bought smoked salmon. Terry was off at a party at Noelle Campbell Sharp's house drinking champagne. She did ask the local hotel for the paintings off their walls and they gave them. They also gave tables, chairs and crockery. I remember Madeleine and I frantically gathering wild flowers to put on the table. But it happened, and it was the most wonderful banquet, and she never lifted a hand." An invitation for Terry's birthday a few years ago featured a Gone with the Wind theme: "Terry Keane is 55 on Friday, the 9th of September, and frankly my dears, she doesn't give a damn," it read. "So come along to the plantation . . . and celebrate with mint juleps and jazz at 8, supper at 9 and hominy grits at dawn. Come as Scarlett or Melanie, Rhett or Ashley, or a coal black momma and recapture the glamour of a bygone era that is Gone with the Wind. After all, tomorrow is another day."
When she entertained at home, she gave dinner parties for her inner circle. A typical gathering might include Tom Kennedy, proprietor of Alias Tom; former Monkstown restaurateur John Burke, travel agent Gillian Bowler and her husband Harry Synder; Donnagh O'Connor (brother of Ulick) and his wife Anne, and Noelle Campbell Sharp "when they were speaking to each other". Since her heart attack two years ago, the pace has lessened considerably and she makes an effort to replace the vintage champagne with mineral water.
Terry joined the Sunday Independent in 1989 after being wooed by deputy editor Anne Harris. More than a decade later, the management at the newspaper feels betrayed by the columnist's defection and her decision to sell her story to a rival newspaper. Sources said she earned between £40,000 and £60,000 a year at the Sunday Independent, with hefty expenses and a number of annual travel junkets to exotic destinations.
When Terry joined the newspaper she told her new employers that she could not type. Instead she would sit beside someone in the newsroom, often her daughter Madeleine, and dictate the copy. As time went on, an increasing number of items were gathered by other members of the staff, the finishing touches always made by Anne Harris. Harris has said in the past that the reason she wanted Terry Keane on the staff was because she was Charlie Haughey's mistress. Whether she could type - or write - was not at issue. Harris wanted to make her a cross between Mata Hari and Scarlett O'Hara. Consequently, friends say that a "super-bitch" was created by the column and Terry had to live up to it, becoming a victim of the image in the end.
Madeleine has always had a close relationship with her mother and is very protective of her. She remains in her job at the Sunday Independent - although she was away last week while events unfolded. As well as Madeleine, Terry's son Timothy, and at one time Madeleine's husband David Appleyard, have all worked for the newspaper. For all the criticism, those who know her say that Keane was always concerned about her children and according to one they "always took priority, even over C.J.H.". The children are said to have always been well aware of the affair. An annual Christmas gathering including Terry, her children and Charlie was a tradition, apparently, and sometimes took place in Kinsealy.
Terry's assertions that Charlie did not give her money have been greeted with a strong degree of cynicism - a direct link is drawn between her "kiss and tell" confession and his current financial circumstances. Was it a coincidence that she decided to tell all at a time when her lover's funds have dried up? One friend said that he believed that while Haughey spent lavishly on her, cash did not exchange hands. There are stories of charge accounts in Dublin department stores being paid by Haughey as well as household bills. "I heard a story that she was once complaining about being broke and he took out a wad of cash and handed it to her," said one friend. "She threw it back at him told him not to be giving her money in front of other people. I know it was important to her to earn her own salary."
Last Sunday night at the bash in his honour at the Berkeley Court Hotel, Gay Byrne said that if the Late Late had not broadcast the interview with Terry Keane, one of the other RTE programmes would have done so. He said that his producer Cillian Fennell had negotiated with Keane very early on. The knowledge that she was prepared to spill the beans about her affair publicly may well have come from Cillian's friend, John Ryan of the Sunday Times, who followed up the Late Late performance by editing a three-page spread on Sunday. During his time with the Sunday Independent, Ryan would have been one of the contributors to the Keane Edge.
The Ireland editor of the Sunday Times, Rory Godson, described the figures being bandied about as payment for Keane's revelations as greatly exaggerated. She is being paid £65,000 for the four extracts, which includes access to her photo album, he said, and around £100,000 for a two-year contract to write a column. "The column will be a political and social diary - a cross between our Sue Denham column and the Keane Edge - without the obsession with people's private lives which the Keane Edge has displayed." Keane has been contracted to "write most of the items," he said. However it was inevitable with such a column that others would provide items, on occasion. Sales of the newspaper went from an average of 118,000 throughout April to 147,000 last Sunday, he said.
Keane's defence for revealing all was that a forthcoming book by her former colleague in the Sunday Independent, Kevin O'Connor, contained details of the affair. However, there were many this week who believed that by alluding to the affair in her column, or allowing it to be referred to, she brought "Sweetie" into the public arena herself years ago, making it fair game. Those who have affection for her worry that the monster which she created herself will now destroy her.