In a media interview Ken Starr says he makes no apologies for his prosecution of Monica Lewinsky

Last Christmas Eve, Ken Starr took his family to a cosy restaurant in New York’s West Village. They had finished their meal and were leaving for a carol service when he spotted in the foyer a dark-haired woman who looked familiar.

“She bears a remarkable resemblance to Monica,” he thought, recalling the White House intern who had been the focal point of the special investigation he spearheaded as independent prosecutor two decades ago, which culminated in the impeachment of a US president. Then the penny dropped: it washer.

Remarkably, until that moment, Starr had never met Monica Lewinsky, the woman he put on the rack in 1998 as he tried to extract evidence from her about her tryst with Bill Clinton. According to Lewinsky’s account of the awkward encounter, she managed to stammer to Starr that she wished they had both made different choices back then, as a gentle way of inviting him to say sorry to her. But he made no move to apologise that night. The two exchanged pleasantries and went their separate ways.

Now, nine months later, Starr, 72, has a second chance to set things right with Lewinsky. We are discussing Contempt, his new memoir of the Clinton investigation, when I put the question to him: “Do you owe Monica Lewinsky an apology?”

I choose my words carefully, repeating verbatim the question NBC News posed to Clinton in June. Outrage ensued when the former president blurted: “No, I do not.”  Starr’s response to the same question is identical, surprisingly so given that the two men were arch-enemies. “No,” he tells me, adding the non-apology: “I regret the sorrow she went through, the travail she went through.”