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Harry Blackwood was reticent about revealing the exclusive after a prickly “live” encounter with a TV interviewer who asked why the Hartlepool Mail was so anti-Mandelson. The editor claims that’s far from the truth.

He told HoldTheFrontPage: “He comes into our office every couple of weeks, walks through the newsroom chatting to whoever’s in and always has a laugh.

“Then he comes into my office and never stays less than half an hour.

“He wants to know what the big issues are locally and he uses me as a sounding board in return. But if we tell him there’s a particular problem he’s on to it right away, like any MP.”

But he let slip to the TV reporter on location about the now-famous phone call – but wouldn’t tell them what the story was. And he wouldn’t let them inside to see the paper being put together.

“One look at our subs’ screens and they’d have had the exclusive before us,” he said.

Harry said he’d made himself available for the media because “they are working journalists, just like I am, trying to do their job”.

As for the resignation – the second under Harry’s editorship?

Harry said: “We’d thought in the morning he wouldn’t go. Then he went to Downing Street – and you only go there for one reason at a time like that.”

In the exclusive Mail interview, Mandelson revealed: