The Reverend Dr Ian Paisley is such a nice old fella. Let us all be like this, I thought at one point, if by God's grace we reach 82. From the moment he came into the room until the moment, an hour and 15 minutes later, that I left it, his predominant mood was sweet good humour. So many of his thoughts and memories had a smile or a laugh attached to them - laughter that seemed not at all forced, quite boyish in its pitch. Sometimes it took me a while to understand the comedy. Why, for example, did he smile when he described his birthplace, Armagh, as "the ecclesiastical capital of the great country of Ireland"? Eventually the penny dropped. His smile was the sardonic equivalent of quote marks: the archbishops of both the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic church have their palaces in Armagh, episcopacy is ridiculous and undivided Ireland a fantasy. No mention, though, of the great whore of Rome....