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Hello and welcome to Political Thinking.

This week I remembered one of the first calls I got as a political journalist a long, long

time ago.

A friend of mine who worked for the Prime Minister of the day rang up and told me an extraordinary

story.

I was trying to warn Michael Hasseltine, who was then John Major's deputy, about a bad

news story that was coming my friend told me.

And he laughed at me.

He said, if you knew what I knew dear boy, you wouldn't care less.

Indeed he continued, take the day off, take the week off, go on holiday, because once the

world knows what is about to be revealed, they will talk about nothing else.

Now I warned the BBC to be on standby, because my friend and I had no idea what this story

would be.

It was so long ago we thought it might be about the divorce between Prince Charles and Princess

Diana.

It was only when I heard the newspaper review the following morning when the Daily Mirror

splashed on a link between a disease in cattle and a disease in human brains that I realised.

And I broke the news on the today programme that CJD was linked to BSE that in other words

mad cow disease could potentially kill at one stage they said up to a million people.

There's nothing like that figure, but it did cause the same sort of anxiety we've seen

this week with coronavirus.

...