There was a flurry of media excitation a couple of weeks back when it emerged that dog-cloner Bernann McKinney was, in fact, Mormon kidnapper Joyce McKinney.
Bernann was pictured in Seoul with five pups which she’d had cloned by South Korean scientists from her pet pit-bull. There were conflicting accounts of why she wanted exact replicas of her beloved Booger. Perhaps she just liked living in an atmosphere of teeth.
The story took a giddy turn when journalists of a certain age realised they’d seen that face before. Bernann was, in fact, Joyce McKinney, on the run from British police for 31 years on charges of kidnap and sexual assault. It was alleged then that she had travelled from the US with a hired associate, seized 17-stone missionary Kirk Anderson on the street, subdued him with chloroform, thrown him into the boot of a car and driven 200 miles to a picturesque cottage in Devon where he was chained to a bed and forced to have sex with her.
At a remand hearing, she delivered one of the great courtroom quotes of the age: “I loved him so much I’d have skied naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose.” Nobody has ever been as nice as that about me.
Anyway, after three months on remand in Holloway, she was bailed, and promptly skedaddled to the Appalachian Mountains dressed as a nun. And that was the last we heard of Ms. McKinney, until this month.
The fascination with the story back in 1977 had been heightened by suggestions that Ms. McKinney had funded the kidnap by appearing in risqué photographs, movies and/or live-action entertainments. Which provided the basis for the Sunday World sentence:
“The way she set about amassing the money to manacle her Mormon told more about the morals of Ms. McKinney than anything the media men who made her a martyr had even imagined.”
There. Just taking the opportunity to dust it off and give it another airing.
I know. Pathetic.

It’s frequently been observed in the column that drugs drive people mad.
The latest example is the stg.£13 million fine imposed by Fifa on Romanian footballer Adrian Mutu for having broken his contract with Chelsea by snorting cocaine back in 2004.
Dumitru Costin, president of the Romanian footballers’ union commented: “If Mutu were an English player, he would only have been fired by his club.” In fact, it’s not even certain he’d have been fired.
Premiership players can get out of their trees on booze and batter women without suffering a day’s suspension. Or land some inoffensive passer-by in casualty. Or commit racist assault. But join half the business and cultural elite in snorting a line of coke and they’ll try to ruin you for life.
It’s sad there hasn’t been an outcry from other players against this insane ruling.
It’s worth recalling the Feiffer cartoon on the etiquette for refusing a line of coke offered by your host at a party.
“Nobody knows, since this has never happened.”
The transfer to Paris of Fr. Aidan Troy, parish priest of Holy Cross in Ardoyne in Belfast, has been the occasion of much regretful comment.
Fr. Troy became a familiar face on the nightly news back in 1981 when, every morning, he accompanied Catholic children and their parents as they walked to school through a corridor of Loyalist hatred. He deserves the credit showered on him for his role during that ugly episode.
However, Fr. Troy figured most recently on the front pages in April after telling parishioners not to give money to members of the Roma community – arguably the most oppressed ethnic group in Europe –begging outside Sunday mass. These weren’t genuine beggars, he claimed, but part of a scam to con the charitably-minded. Gang bosses were dropping them off and then picking them up later with the takings.
A considerable commotion ensued, particularly on radio phone-ins. Callers were overwhelmingly on Fr. Troy’s side: the police/social services/immigration authorities must take action. The few who tried to take Troy to task were swamped in scorn.
On a UTV discussion programme, the priest was praised by a SDLP and a Unionist MLA for his courage in risking the wrath of the politically correct. Neither of two other panelists demurred.
On the same programme, a senior PSNI officer dealing with gang-masters exploiting immigrants said that the force knew of no incident conforming to the story told by Troy and had no evidence of any such phoney-begging phenomenon. Responding, Fr. Troy confessed that he had no evidence either. He had witnessed no such incident. But he had been told that somebody else had witnessed such an event. It was on this basis, and this alone, that he had “spoken out”.
But he didn’t withdraw his remarks. More surprisingly, he wasn’t invited to by the programme presenter nor – although the atmosphere in the studio became suddenly more subdued – by any member of the audience.
Today, when the topic of Roma immigrants is raised in the North, reference is commonly made to gang-masters, professional beggars, con-artists and the like. Fr. Troy continues to be cited as having exposed this abuse. The lasting effect of his remarks, and of the prominent media coverage they attracted, has been to lend authority and plausibility to a racist lie.
Before he finally takes leave of Belfast, commendation ringing in his ears, ought be not to consider withdrawing remarks for which he had no evidence whatsoever, and offering an apology to the Roma people?