Yes Paddyann, and on that very point....The Sunday Mail newspaper (sister of the Scottish Daily Record and nothing to do with the Daily Mail) had an excellent article on June 2 in which four senior journalists in their 60s and 70s - who were on strike with Mr Gove in 1989 - queried his claims that he was a reluctant participant in the year-long dispute but went along with it because he was the "new kid".
The other journalists in the story are mystified as to why Mr Gove nowadays appears to misrepresent and play down his role in the strike. They say he was enthusiastic and at times played a key role in the dispute at the Aberdeen Press and Journal/Evening Express, which was about union representation.
The story merited two pages in the Sunday Mail and seemed to have involved a lot of research and interviews by political editor John Ferguson.
If I were a friend of Mr Gove, I think I'd be worried someone is raking up his past, but, unlike the cocaine claims, the strike story seems to have grown in importance because of his own previous attempts to shift the narrative, and not from the actual industrial dispute, where all his colleagues remember him as bright, committed and "pulling his weight" in terms of strike action.
If somebody is making huge efforts to stop Mr Gove becoming PM, he would seem to be partially authoring his own demise expecting experienced journalists to keep quiet about real events in which they were deeply and personally involved.
There's a kind of continued arrogance here that is repeated if his current mates are genuinely expecting people won't pursue the truth of what he put on his US visa form regarding use of cocaine.
So now I'm not so sorry for him after all.