However I was disappointed by the BBC2 show.

It was actually too fair to Mary who Julie portrayed as a sweetheart. She was - but there was an element of humorless steel about her which Walters never captured. I knew her. Likewise, Hugh Green was a very decent and intelligent man but he came across as an eccentric prone to obscenity, far from the truth.

As I've said before I really liked Mary and though we featured many times on opposite sides of debate and she described me (accurately) as a "moral anarchist" - quite a perceptive observation - we respected each other.

In hindsight I believe she really had much more to offer than we realised. By defending freedom of speech, we missed the extraordinary domination of the media that now exists and has meant superficiality, caricature and headline mentality has affected and infected our society, poisoning decency, fairness and tolerance.

By fighting for education over persecution we missed out the frightening effect of catering to the idiots. Since the majority only understands slogans and the media is motivated by greed, not truth, we are in a dire situation.

Mary's alternative universe (Jesus) may not be much better. But it's not much worse either.

The media today is united in fighting for press freedom without responsibility. Oh it pretends to be responsible but ratings, circulation and power are the dominating motives. That is indeed dangerous and will destroy the species.