Sir Stuart Bell had a very forgiving nature. During the Labour party's civil wars of the 1980s, when I worked on the Sunday Times, I phoned him at home one Saturday morning. We talked for half an hour about the latest plots in which he was then an active player. The story he gave me led the paper the following day.
The following week I bumped into him at Westminster and thanked him for giving me a splash. "A splash!" he replied, "You gave me a flood." It turned out that Stuart had been running a bath when I called, had forgotten to turn off the taps and had returned upstairs to discover his bathroom under water. Extensive rebuilding of the Bell home followed. He often laughed about it in later years. Mind you, he never gave me another exclusive.