My verbal sparring with Charles Taylor

He first came to international prominence after an interview on the BBC's Focus on Africa programme with its then editor Robin White, who looks back at Charles Taylor's rise and fall. New Year's Days are usually a bit thin on news and much of the discussion in the Focus on Africa office on New Year's Day 1989 was along the lines of "how on earth are we going to fill the programme?" And then, Charles Taylor called.  He claimed to have invaded Liberia and was on his way to Monrovia to overthrow President Doe.  I'd never heard of Taylor, or his Patriotic Front movement but he sounded plausible.

Liberia was not a happy place to be in 1989. It had been run for the previous 10 years by Samuel K Doe, an illiterate army sergeant who ended more than 100 years of rule by the True Whig party - by parading government ministers through the streets of Monrovia, naked, and then shooting them dead on the beach.