We need to end this argy-bargy writes Richard Madeley

Most people thought the Falklands were off the coast of Scotland (Image: Getty) Be honest, had you ever even heard of the Falklands before? Most people thought they were off the coast of Scotland. (No, that’s the Faroes, and anyway they belong to Denmark.) I only ask because the frontrunner in today’s Argentinian elections could hardly be a more different character from the odious and absurd General Galtieri who ordered the Falklands invasion back in 1982. Unlike the strutting dictator then, the current ruling party leader, Javier Milei, wants to negotiate with Britain over sovereignty for what Argentina has always called the Malvinas. I remember two things about the Falklands War from 40-odd years ago. Firstly, was the discernible expression of shock and disbelief emanating from Galtieri’s silly face on his balcony in Buenos Aires when the penny dropped that his neighbour, far from being preoccupied on the far side of the world, was steaming straight home to grab his stolen property back. The second was the dramatically, almost violently, shifting opinion here about Mrs Thatcher’s decision to send a task force. Of course there were plenty who’d denounce her whatever she did. As one of her backbenchers once complained: ‘Mrs T could save a child from a runaway horse and she’d still be accused of animal cruelty.’ No, what I vividly recall were the people who called themselves anti-imperialist and anti-fascist, but couldn’t clock that Galtieri was the very model of a far-right dictator infull cry. Soldiers on air defence duty at Bluff Cove during the Falklands War (Image: Getty) Their hatred of Thatcher was so intense they couldn’t see past it. ‘He’s only taking back what’s his,’ I remember one debater informing me. ‘But it’s NOT his,’ I spluttered, ‘it’s the islanders’! He can’t just walk in and tell them what to do… and arrest them. And threaten to shoot them! That’s what tyrants do,can’t you SEE?’ (I was quite a lot younger in 1982.) If I’d had Diana Mondino to quote back then, I could have kept my blood pressure down. Mrs Mondino, Javier Milei’s senior economic adviser, could have been speaking on the floor of the Commons this week when she said: ‘Islanders’ rights will be respected, should be respected, cannot be disrespected. ‘The concept that one can impose on people what can be done or what SHOULD be done… it’s so feudal and naïve… it may take many years but you cannot force on other people any decisions – not on Argentinians, but not on anyone any more. That has to stop.’ Of course the Falklands are an anachronism and at some point the UK and Argentina will have to hammer out something better than the current armed truce. But with grown-ups like Mrs Mondino around, that reality has moved a step closer. Nadiya at the back is like benching Messi in a world Cup (Image: Getty ) If you’d asked me to put odds on which Strictly Come Dancing professional was going to be shoved to the back of the chorus this year, I’d NEVER have said Nadiya. She joined in 2017 and finished fifth with celeb Dan Walker in 2021. Dan said this week that leaving Nadiya out of the main line-up ‘feels like putting Messi on the bench for the World Cup final!’. Dan, you of all people should know that the politics of BBC Television passeth the peace of all understanding… Alastair Stewart’s revealed he’s been diagnosed with dementia. It seems to have set in around about the time he was 70, not so much by losing his memory, Alastair tells us, but difficulty in recalling how to do some basic things – putting his tie on straight, doing his shoelaces properly, setting the alarm for the right time the next morning. Most of you will recall Alastair from his glory days at ITN, where he covered the big breaking stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. But I remember him from a LOT further before that, in around 1979. I was a greenhorn reporter for little Border Television in Carlisle; Alastair was the hot new hombre up from ITN in London. We were covering the same story, something to do with the Sellafield Nuclear Plant in Cumbria. Far from patronising his country cousin, Alastair bent over backwards to help me, even lending our film crew his microphone when ours broke. That night, News At Ten dropped his report for space and he was inconsolable until I took him out to drown his sorrows and learned he had two great skills as a TV reporter – he could tell a story, and hold his drink.