On Wednesday, Jean McBride, whose son, Peter, was murdered by Scots Guards James Fisher and Mark Wright in 1992, went to Downing Street to hand in a letter about the continued employment by the British army of the two murderers. She had already submitted a letter in April, but Downing Street recently admitted that it had been lost. Y'know what it's like with kids around. I expect one of them used the back of it to do a drawing, or threw up on it.

In any event, Jean was taking no chances. Her new letter was enlarged to three feet by four and laminated. Let us hope that it does not get used as a changing mat. I invade the privacy of the Blair children in this way because yesterday morning I was listening to Lord Wakeham of the Press Complaints Commission, whose annual report is just out, speaking on the Today programme about the high quality of the British Press and its rare lapses. Much of the interview involved his efforts to protect the prime minister's baby from press intrusion.

Given that this is one Lord who does not owe his ennoblement to Tony Blair, I was slightly puzzled about why Wakeham is so eager to do his bidding. One would have thought that politicians, who habitually lunge into their constituents' prams with photographers in tow, would occupy the low moral ground on this question.

And I would think that, given the lies Jean McBride has read about the murder of her son, and Wakeham's concern about articles that are,"inaccurate or intrude on private grief", the PCC would be a body with better things to do. But let's be honest, Leo Blair is the son of the prime minister, and Peter McBride was just some paddy who got shot.

This week involved a number of anniversaries for Mrs McBride. On September 2 1998, Mo Mowlem released Wright and Fisher from jail. This had nothing to do with the Good Friday agreement. As far as anyone knows, the only loyalist organisation to which they belong is the Scots Guards, and it is not on ceasefire. Their release came two days before the anniversary of their crime.

On Wednesday, it was exactly one year since the high court in Belfast ordered the British army to reconsider its breach of Queen's Regulations in retaining soldiers who had received a custodial sentence, in this case a sentence for murder. Jean came to London to attempt to find out why the army board is taking so long to reconsider its decision. Perhaps the file has been lost.

Press interest in her visit was scanty but she did give a quick radio interview on BBC Northern Ireland. In the interests of balance, of course, the Scottish MP Tam Dalyell, was then interviewed to stick up for the soldiers, as though somehow the fact that Jean once had a son and he is now dead is merely her opinion.

She is of course used to the popularity of her son's killers in the media. Ludovic Kennedy has used the Daily Mail to say that Peter was a known IRA sympathiser. Kennedy had much to say about the republican sympathies in the New Lodge area, including a magnificent interpretation of working class Belfast life: "Residents often kept their back doors open to provide escape routes for the IRA." In fact, the RUC knew Peter well as a petty thief and have consistently said that he was neither a paramilitary or a sympathiser. But Kennedy is a grand old man of the media, above such trifles, though not above printing the McBrides' address in full, whcih proved of assistance to the many people who wished to send them sectarian hate mail

One would have thought that bringing death threats down on people verges on intrusiveness. And given the PCC's urgent wish to help "prominent people" you would think a person whose home has been identified in a national newspaper would count.

Jean might have gone to the PCC were it not for its earlier rejection of a complaint when the Mail and the Standard repeated the lie that Wright and Fisher believed Peter was carrying a bomb. Every court that has looked at the case has concluded the killers were lying, for the simple reason that Peter had just been thoroughly searched by their patrol. He was carrying a T-shirt. Indeed, if they had seriously believed that Peter had a bomb, you might think they would have warned other soldiers and RUC officers who approached the youth as he lay dying in an alley.

Last year, the McBrides saw the Daily Mail run a two-page spread with extracts from a book by the mercenary colonel Tim Spicer, who was Wright and Fisher's commanding officer. Spicer repeated the old lie among a welter of other inventions - some completely new. Jean was moved to try the PCC again. The commission found the book to be mere, "comment" and absolved the Mail from responsibility.

Still, terrible about that christening photo of Leo Blair though, wasn't it?