This was the front cover of The Sunday Business Post Magazine for the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Good Friday Agreement, and I find it uniquely depressing. Not only is Nobel Laureate John Hume missing, but so too is the first ever woman secretary to Northern Ireland: Mo Mowlam.

Mo Mowlam wasn’t in my history books at school. I can’t really remember the first time I heard about her. And that’s a crying shame because there are few things more enjoyable than hearing about this peerless, fearless and (delightfully) graceless woman.

“Mo’s celebrated informality was often credited with having helped to cut through political impasses and bring people to the negotiating table”

Unusual for politicians, Mo Mowlam was relentlessly likeable. There’s a video of her, in February 2000, taking part in a puppy wedding on what is now The Graham Norton Show. It was filmed just after Blair had made Peter Mandelson Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, or rather “Secretary of State for Ireland” as Mandelson referred to himself during his first appearance at the House of Commons despatch box. Mo, for all her hard work in Northern Ireland, was relegated to the relatively lowly position of Cabinet Office Minister.

Norton’s interview with her is fascinating. Her sense of humour makes her a comfortable guest on his couch. After a brisk succession of impeccable one-liners (“Are you still very interested in Northern Ireland?” “I’m interested. I keep up to date, of course. But I’ve got a very demanding job now, I do drugs”), Norton quickly clocks the happy absurdity of why everyone likes Mo.

In many ways Mo Mowlam seems totally out of whack with our ideas of a politician: you actually want to see her on The Graham Norton Show.

She was uncouth. She was unfiltered. She was ferociously authentic. Mo disdained rulebooks for stately conduct. Famously, on her unprecedented visit to the Maze prison she threw off her wig (worn because she was battling a brain tumour at the time) to smoke rollies with UFF and UDA terrorists.

She got in trouble for this.

Nor did Mo have any qualms about calling Martin McGuinness, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader and later deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, a ‘babe’ and a ‘bastard’ in close quarters; she knew such irreverence bought affection, and trust. Neither did she have any qualms about flashing the UUP First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble her knickers, although I doubt that this bought either affection or trust.

She got in trouble for all of this too.

Mo’s celebrated informality was often credited with having helped to cut through political impasses and bring people to the negotiating table.

So why is it so hard to hear about her?

Tony Blair, whose praise of Mo in his 1999 conference speech drew the room to its feet for a standing ovation, did not even mention her name during his anniversary speech in Belfast this April.

Everywhere, from recent BBC articles celebrating the Good Friday Agreement as a ‘work of genius’, to my high-school text books, Mo’s stepdaughter, Henrietta Norton says it best: “Where the fuck is she?”.

The Guardian columnist Zoe Williams suggested that it was because “the ​best way to get written out of history” was to be “a middle-aged woman”.

I don’t get it. In my eyes, Mo makes for the best kind of history.

Mo Mowlam is someone I wish I had met.

And what is more, she’s someone I hope we will continue to hear about.