Mr Seamus Mallon has finally explained what he means by his term, "the north of Ireland", when with Mr David Trimble he addressed north Down fifth- and sixth-formers at Bangor High School yesterday.
The North's Deputy First Minister told about 500 students gathered in Bangor High School assembly hall that he received more angry letters from unionists on this issue than on any other.
Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon fielded questions from students from 10 north Down schools on the great issues of the day. But it was Mr Mallon's persistent use of "the north of Ireland", rather than "Northern Ireland" or even "Ulster", which raised particular interest.
Asked to define the north of Ireland, he replied: "I could define it in many ways. Northern Ireland? - not quite right. Ulster? - not quite accurate. The north of Ireland? - Now don't ask me why I use it. Some people think that I thought this up years ago, and this could be my way of getting at unionism; that I lay awake at night thinking, `Good man, Seamus, you've got one here'. That's not the case.
"I find it easier to say phonetically, the north of Ireland, rather than `Norn Iron'. And I don't make any fun in saying that. But I am a product of my environment politically. I am part of a nationalist tradition that would see Northern Ireland as the north of Ireland.
"I am someone who actually gets a little bit tight at the shoulders when I hear the term Ulster used, when it is not really Ulster. But at the end of the day what does it matter what we call it, if in effect we are all working together to create a new life for us all here?"
That had them, but it was the climactic delivery of the old drama hand that won the applause from the overwhelmingly young unionist audience. "Would you hold it against me, that one thing," said Mr Mallon, "if the tradition that I represent moves into making Northern Ireland, the north of Ireland, Ulster, whatever, a much better and safer place?"
Mr Trimble also had to deal with a couple of spin balls. One Catholic student, Fergal O'Reilly, wondered, as the North's First Minister represented all of the people, was it not time that he resigned from the "predominantly Protestant Orange Order"?
"No," said Mr Trimble. "In the context of the Belfast Agreement, which is supposed to be about respecting the views and identities of other people, to suggest that people should not be allowed to belong to this or that other religious or fraternal organisation is quite inappropriate."
And Mr Trimble, too, earned his round of applause when he added: "I do wish it was time that some nationalists stopped demonising the Orange Order, which is a very important part of the historical background of this community."
The Bangor High School setting allowed Mr Trimble, a former law lecturer at Queen's, and Mr Mallon, a former headmaster in Armagh, revisit their teaching skills. When asked by Lindsay Orr if it was now time to put the politics of the past in the past and look to the future, Mr Trimble replied: "Could I give you an old Russian proverb? A person who lives in the past loses an eye. A person who forgets the past loses both eyes."
"It's hard to follow that," said Mr Mallon, "but I'll try. Plato said, not to be aware of the past is to be for ever a child. Yes, we are products of the past. We cannot have some type of metamorphosis that blocks the past out. But we shouldn't allow ourselves to be paralysed, or poisoned, or above all to owe debts to the past."