The watch had been out for some time: this time around there could well be a Terinu.

(For those to whom the term is a mystery, Terinu was a man who came forward on the eve of an election in the 1930s claiming to have seen Lord Gerald Strickland among the Freemasons. It was a lie, and Lord Strickland still won the election).

This time around it could have been a letter sent to this paper. In the letter, the writer bitterly attacked Labour leader Alfred Sant for not signing the Gift of Life petition that would have led to increased pressure to ensure a two-thirds majority backing the ban on abortion and inscribing such a ban in the Constitution.

The letter carried a gmail identification and an address in Mgarr, together with a telephone number. But when this paper called the number, the elderly lady who replied said she did not have that surname, did not live in that street and had not sent any such letter to the paper.