There have been plenty of stories about Boris Johnson and the so-called Downing Street 'party-gate' scandal, many of them upsetting and infuriating in equal measure. The latest, involving images of the PM hoisting a drink aloft, surrounded by colleagues and booze, stood out for to me for one particular reason - the date.
The images are reported to have been taken from a leaving party held in Downing Street on November 13, 2020 - at a time that the country was in a strict national lockdown following a major surge in covid cases. Just a few days later I was given the opportunity to observe the brutal reality of life inside the under-pressure Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.
That day remains the most harrowing and intense of my time in journalism. Liverpool had undergone a savage second covid wave through October and the hospital and its exhausted staff remained in the eye of the storm as myself and our photographer Andrew Teebay were granted access to the ward.
