Ruth Dudley Edwards: Nell and I got on well together, but she could be a frightful pain

I try to emulate him, but some characters are so annoying that they irritate me beyond endurance.

I know I’m not alone. I have an ultra-sensible and competent friend who starts gibbering crossly during Strictly Come Dancing when she catches sight of Claudia Winkleman’s fringe.

In my case, self-righteousness, pomposity, pretentiousness and virtue signalling are all triggers that set my teeth on edge.

Unfortunately, all are characteristics of the president of the country of which I’m still a citizen, and he loves the limelight, so he pops up in the news with annoying frequency.

Every time Michael D Higgins opens his mouth or issues a statement, I grit my teeth and try - often vainly - to hang on to a sense of perspective.

It’s difficult. This is a bloke who mourned Fidel Castro - from whose tyranny millions fled - as “a giant among global leaders whose view was not only one of freedom but for all of the oppressed and excluded people on the planet.”

His latest inadvertent assault on my equanimity was in his tribute to Nell McCafferty (from the city I’ll call Derry or she’ll return to haunt me).

In the midst of all the preposterous Nell-worshipping since her death, the historian and human rights activist Liam Kennedy quite rightly wrote a splendid corrective in this newspaper pointing out that though she was courageous and eloquent in her admirable assault on Irish Catholic hypocrisy and her activism on behalf of women and the poor, Nell’s tribal sympathy for the Provisional IRA, affection for mass murderer Martin McGuinness (because he was a neighbour’s son), and her apparent indifference to IRA beatings and shootings of children, were very serious flaws (Leading journalist was flawed advocate of social justice, August 27).

I agree with him, and would add how much I deplored what became her bigotry towards men and her frequently appalling rudeness towards and about them.

I dislike misandry just as much as I do misogyny, and I was outraged when she barred men from being friends of hers on Facebook.

She could be a frightful pain. Anger bubbled very close to the surface about imagined as well as real grievances - as it has done and still often does among Derry nationalists.

But despite our very different politics we got on well and on the rare occasions we encountered each other - sometimes when we were both covering parades - we laughed at each other in a friendly way.

I just checked our messages on Facebook, which were all benign.

A typical example was my birthday greeting to her years ago: “Happy birthday, Nell. See you somewhere, sometime, at a barricade. You'll be complaining; I'll be explaining. X”

President Higgins gave his tribute in - as usual - self-consciously poetic language: “Those who have had Nell as a friend and an ally are very fortunate in their being given the gift of experiencing humanity in all its possibilities and vulnerabilities.”

What does that drivel even mean?

Nell - whose bluntness I enjoyed - would have found some choice words for it.