‘Rod was right,’ I was told by Aidan Barclay, who as proprietor had nearly ended up in the dock himself. The Rod unit was born. I once asked if there was a substitute for the f-word; he suggested the c-word. When The Spectator was being sold, I had to explain to prospective buyers why our Rod unit existed. The Rod unit – or red team, as I also called it – would usually find that the extraordinary things Rod wrote about were exactly as he said.