IT’S the little things you notice first. And years later, when the ugly truth could no longer be concealed you often found yourself wondering if there was anything more you could have done. Those hooded phrases that then seemed so innocent and benign; how did I not notice that they were cries for help? All those unreturned texts and messages come back to haunt you. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own tawdry little concerns I could have been there for him and gently guided him away from that path that must inevitably lead to perdition. For the purposes of this column I’ll call him John, though that isn’t his real name.

The first ripple occurred outside Buchanan underground station when we were confronted with a beggar pathetically soliciting some of our loose coinage. “I was in a car accident; been unemployed for a year and haven’t had a hot dinner since the DWP stopped my incapacity benefit,” said the mendicant. “And tell me,” said John, “how does this compare with your financial performance for the previous 12 months?” He then tossed some silver in the man’s direction and gave a mirthless laugh. “That was a bit harsh,” I said. “Maybe,” John replied, “but he’s probably rolling in benefits and begging for beer money.” I shrugged it off and put it down to his recent decision to take up golf.

On another occasion we were watching Donald Trump on the pub television railing against Mexicans during his presidential campaign. “You know,” he said, “Trump speaks a lot of sense; I sometimes wish politicians in this country had the balls to be as honest as him.”

“But we’re both from an immigrant community,” I protested. “Where would we both be if they’d turned back the boats coming from Donegal?” And it was then that the first icy fingers of doubt began to run down my spine. Those initial, seemingly isolated outbursts were followed by other signs … lots of them. There was the incident with the rolled-up Daily Telegraph concealed inside his copy of Star Trek Monthly. And was it just my imagination or did John seem to be spending more time looking at the stocks and shares than on the sports pages? He had a meter installed in his bathroom and there was that time he charged corkage at his house-warming party. He even talked about being a farmer for God’s sake.

Events took a sinister turn when John turned up at a school parents’ night and caused a loud and embarrassing scene with the Modern Studies teacher. Accounts of the incident vary but it seems he was unhappy when his daughter expressed some sympathy for the miners in an essay about the 1984 strike. “I’ve a good mind to remove her from this Communist snake-pit and send her to Hutchie,” eye-witnesses reported afterwards. “That’ll mean a lot of double-shifts in the taxi,” I quipped. When this was reported back to him he threatened to end our lifelong friendship. I simply put it down to overwork and the pressure of a second mortgage for the cottage in Twechar.

On another occasion John berated Fr O’Hanlon for dwelling too much on the parable of the loaves and the fishes. “That’s the third time in two years you’ve preached that sermon, Father,” he said to the bemused young cleric. “You’ll be telling us next that Jesus favoured redistribution and nationalisation. When was the last time you gave us the Parable of the Talents?”

The phone call came in the middle of the night. I wasn’t expecting it as I hadn’t heard from John for months, though I’d seen a picture of him in the local paper looking smug with other Pringle-sweatered worthies at some charity golf event at Killermont. “Look,” he said, “I’ve got a problem and I’d like you to accompany me to a meeting next week. I’d like you to be there for support.” Looking back, I suppose I knew in my heart immediately the nature of the meeting, but I was in denial right up to the final moment.

When we walked into the community centre there were a group of 20 or so people who looked terrifyingly normal. When the meeting started John was the first to be called to the podium. Time seemed to stand still for a few seconds and I could hear my heart beating in my chest. “My name is John,” he said, “and I am a Tory.” Tears began to trickle down his cheeks and a few people reached out to him to give him a hug. When he returned to his seat beside me I put my hand on his and said: “We’ll face this together.”

It’s two years since that fateful evening and John is largely Tory-free, though there have been a couple of minor relapses, just as his counsellor had warned me there would be. During the Brexit campaign he got into an argument with a supervisor at Waitrose about stocking too much paella and Danish bacon. And his wife called me once when she discovered him looking at The Mail online on his iPad. I told her not to worry as this was a guilty secret shared by many of us. The first task was to wean him off golf and to re-acquaint him with the fraternal joys of public transport. A real breakthrough came when he cancelled his Murrayfield debenture.

The last thing that John and people like him need is to be judged by supercilious lefties who are quick to condemn and slow to help. Laura Pidcock, the new MP for North West Durham says she has “absolutely no intention of being friends” with Tory MPs because she feels “disgusted at the way they’re running this country”.

If my experience with John is anything to go by I’d counsel Ms Pidcock to show a little more charity and understanding of those among us who harbour Tory tendencies.

To paraphrase God, we need to love the Tory but not the Toryism. Only by showing them love, compassion and understanding can we wean them off their self-destructive course. As the Good Book says: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the champagne cocktail out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the Burberry coat out of thy brother’s eye.”