Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  TUESDAY 29 MAY 2001

  At the Labour press conference, the journalist sitting next to me [Peter Hitchens] has his hand in the air for half an hour without being called. ‘Are you ever called?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not waiting to ask a question,’ he explains. ‘This is a position in tantric yoga designed to suppress nausea.’

  Tony Blair clocks me from the platform and flashes me a brilliant smile. William can’t do this. Ffion can. She does it to me at lunchtime in Kingston. I melt immediately. Blair can be suddenly cold and distant, but when he focuses on you the sun shines. Hague doesn’t blow so hot and cold: he is always the same, even-tempered, serene. His stump speech is completely professional, but somehow he doesn’t connect. An elderly Conservative activist in the crowd whispers to me, ‘Life hasn’t touched him yet. He’s still a boy, isn’t he? Now we’ve lost Kenneth Clarke and Douglas Hurd, we haven’t got any grown-ups. Labour has all the serious players these days.’

  At 8.00 p.m. at Millbank I meet up with Tony. We are alone. (Alastair Campbell, looking thin, pasty, none too well, has disappeared.) The Prime Minister, clutching his mug of tea, is weary but buoyant. ‘How are the nights?’ I ask.

  ‘Okay, thanks. Leo is sleeping right through. That’s made a big difference.’ What does Tony think is the single quality most essential to a modern leader? ‘Knowing what you believe in, what you want to achieve.’ What about energy, stamina, moral courage? ‘Yes, they all kick in, but the first essential is to be clear about your aims.’

  ‘Is the Third Way still part of it?’

  ‘Absolutely, Gyles. That’s what it’s all about. Nothing’s changed.’

  He looks directly at me. His eyes are wide open and glistening. He squeezes my arm and pushes his eerie, orange, over-made-up face towards mine. ‘Gyles, the Third Way – it’s real. And it’s for you.’

  WEDNESDAY 30 MAY 2001

  I am expecting to meet William at Central Office at 8.30 a.m. When I arrive, he’s gone. The mood has altered: last night, on Newsnight, he looked pie-eyed and vulnerable. Today’s ICM poll shows the Conservatives losing ground. I gossip with the troops, who know the truth. We’re doomed. Four years ago, William’s plan was clear: begin by convincing the MPs at Westminster that he can deliver (done); next, shore up the core vote by giving them what they want to hear on Europe (done); finally – having secured our base – broaden the appeal, move back to the centre ground and give a distinctive message in the areas the electorate cares about: the economy, crime, education, health. Alas, not done at all. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. We were never going to win anyway. From the electorate’s perspective, it isn’t yet time for a change.

  Fly to Manchester and outside the gates at Old Trafford meet up with Jordan, twenty-three, the surgically enhanced Page Three girl who is standing as an independent in Stetchford. She looks quite rough and completely unreal. The media are out in force. I say to the female reporter from The Guardian, ‘I don’t think this is quite what Emmeline Pankhurst had in mind. Why are you here?’

  ‘Well,’ she says gamely, ‘We’ve got to cover this because there’s a real shortage of women in the campaign. I mean, Ffion won’t say a thing.’

  That’s right, blame Ffion. The Tories just can’t win.688

  THURSDAY 28 JUNE 2001

  A fun few days on the celebrity merry-go-round. I’ve just interviewed Ken Clarke, who should become leader of the Conservative Party but won’t. Europe does for him every time. I asked him for his motto. ‘It’s a good life if you don’t weaken.’ A happy interview with John Major, too. Plenty of white wine and choice Majorisms. When he said Blair is something of a chameleon, I told him he could be something of a chameleon himself, giving everyone he met the impression he was on their side. He responded with a phrase unlikely to fall from the lips of any other Prime Minister: ‘I was never in the business of telling porkies.’

  I like my life. I like the range of my acquaintance – from Paul Daniels (last night) to Bill Nighy today. (They are both so good at what they do.) I went to a private view of the Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery organised by Ivan Massow. Peter Mandelson turned up with a handsome black security guy in tow. ‘Oh,’ squealed Ivan, ‘is he my present?’ Peter was at the Conrad Black party, too. ‘The usual crowd’: Trevor McDonald, Melvyn Bragg, Simon Jenkins (all jolly); Portillo (‘Hello, darling!’ he cried, slapping his palm against mine); Sarah Ferguson (loopier than ever); Angus Ogilvy (sweet); Jack Profumo (eighty-six and still charming); David Frost … ‘A joy, Gyles.’ ‘You’re looking well, David.’ He was looking terrible. ‘I’m on the steady white wine and high protein diet.’ I don’t know how he is still alive. Andrew Lloyd Webber was looking well. ‘I’m 23 pounds lighter after five weeks off alcohol. Shall we write a musical together? A funny one.’

  SATURDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2001

  I telephoned Walter Cronkite in New York. ‘We can smell the burning still. It’s 2 miles away, but we can smell it. And see it. The smoke’s still rising.’689

  ‘How are you?’ I asked, ‘How is America?’

  ‘Numb,’ he replied. He remembered that he had taken us to the World Trade Center for dinner. ‘What can I say? They are burning down our world.’ This does not feel like a week when you want Iain Duncan Smith as your leader – nice guy though he is. Everyone is very jittery. I was pre-recording my show at LBC today – in the ITN building in Gray’s Inn Road – and the fire alarm went off. My stomach churned. I wasn’t alone.

  2002

  FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2002

  Our ten-day try-out of Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! is almost done.690 Given that next week marks the Golden Jubilee, it’s appropriate that I am playing at the Palace and staying at the Balmoral – both, of course, in Westcliff-on-Sea. I am getting a fair flavour of the travelling actor’s life. My bath at the Balmoral is shallow and narrow and the water is alternately freezing and boiling. There is nothing in between. For lunch I have walked through the windswept town and found a smoke-filled café on the sea front where I am sitting now and where I have been joined at my table by a sweet-faced young man who has explained to me that he is schizophrenic but not dangerous. He says hello to everyone who comes into the café and everyone just wants him to go away.

  I have just had a call from Radio 5 Live. They want an interview on who empties the House of Commons. Cue my Paddy Ashdown stories.

  MONDAY 8 APRIL 2002

  I walked along the embankment from Millbank to the Savoy, passing the long queues waiting to go in to Westminster Hall to file past the Queen Mother’s coffin. The funeral is tomorrow, so I thought it politic to wear a dark suit and black tie tonight even though the Savoy dinner was wholly celebratory and, as it turned out, totally uproarious. Iain Dale was marking the fifth birthday of Politico’s, his bookshop and publishing empire, and Margaret Thatcher was his guest of honour. Quite a coup – except that only days ago word reached the world that Lady T. has had a couple of small strokes and consequently, on strict doctor’s orders, is never to speak in public again. We thought that might put a bit of a dampener on the proceedings, but, as it turned out, not so. It was a very jolly party. Iain had packed the room with his family (it was his fortieth birthday, too, I think) and her family (Denis and Carol and entourage) and a cast conjured up from all her yesterdays – John Nott, John Redwood, Sir Rex and Mavis Hunt (the salty smell of the Falkands still in their hair), even John Sergeant from outside the embassy in Paris… Good speeches: Bernard Ingham quite the best. I was the MC and my only task (impressed upon me time and again) was to make absolutely sure that Lady T. heeded her doctor’s advice and resisted all temptation to say a word. I failed. As I announced that the great lady was about to leave and reminded the crowd that, while we could salute her she could not address us, suddenly she was at my side – grinning from ear to ear. Without any warning, she lunged towards the podium and grabbed the microphone with both hands. She thanked us for our welcome and told us to keep the faith. She was unstoppable – and glorious. We roar
ed our approval and delight.

  The Iron Lady may have fallen silent now, but, tonight, we were there for her last hurrah. Weren’t we the lucky ones?

  FRIDAY 28 JUNE 2002

  Last night: the National Portrait Gallery – where Michèle and I are the curators of an exhibition celebrating a century of children’s writers. We were there for the talk on J. M. Barrie, an odd, unhappy man, whose plays are largely forgotten, but whose name will live forever because of his one great creation: Peter Pan.

  Tonight: Highgrove for the British Forces’ Foundation dinner. Noel Edmonds, Anita Harris, Frederick Forsyth, Will Young, two hugely famous Argentinian polo players whose names I don’t catch… Ben Elton provides the cabaret. It doesn’t quite work: it’s too near the knuckle for this audience and I can sense the poor man, trapped in the spotlight, furiously editing the routine as he goes along. He feels he’s dying. He isn’t, and afterwards, in a corner of the room, I embrace him with fellow feeling. What do we learn from Ben’s performance tonight? Our compère, Jim Davidson, tells me, ‘If the audience believe you like them – really like them – they will like you. Put the punters at their ease: make them feel comfortable.’ With Ben, some of them were on edge.

  Not Charles and Camilla. They laughed obligingly. Their delight in each other’s company is palpable. Someone who knew Highgrove in Diana’s day whispers to me, ‘It’s so much happier here now.’ The garden is perfect. Charles is so proud of it. ‘Do you like it?’ he asks, ‘I’m so glad. I want you to like it.’ He squints at me, brows furrowed. ‘Are you still on television?’ he enquires. ‘Now and then,’ I say. ‘I don’t watch,’ he says. ‘Not at all?’ I ask. ‘Not at all,’ he says, peering at me closely. ‘Are you funny?’ he asks. ‘I try,’ I say wanly. He sighs: ‘I know the feeling.’

  Camilla is looking lovely (I tell her so, far too fruitily) and seems utterly at home. She is easy with William and Harry, who sit at a table of young ones, conspicuously the only two at the table who do not smoke. When Charles gets up to leave, Camilla creeps around the edge of the room and follows him out at a discreet distance. Ben and I descend on Harry and William with a flurry of ingratiating banter. Poor lads: they are going to have to endure a lifetime of this.

  FRIDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2002

  Theatre Royal, Newcastle. I spent the day in the House Manager’s office writing up my interview with John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State. He didn’t give much away – beyond a huge dressing gown which had been presented to him as a present in South Africa and which he decided to offload onto me. ‘It’ll make a change from your bloody ridiculous jumpers.’

  He has a colourful way with words. When I arrived at his office – Dover House, Whitehall – I was told he was running late. But I knew he was there because I could hear him stomping about and swearing like a trooper. The air was blue with his effing and blinding, but when, finally, I was admitted to his presence he was all smiles. It’s a nice office – spacious, gracious, overlooking Horse Guards Parade, with its own small garden – and I imagine the trappings of power have helped him go native.

  Does he share my misgivings about the impending war against Iraq?

  ‘No. Tony [Blair] has got good judgement and the courage to be a little ahead of one – and that’s what you want from your leaders – and, hopefully, it’ll work out.’

  ‘Thousands could be killed, John. Innocent people, children. Do you lose sleep about that?’

  ‘I do. I do think about that, and so does Tony, I’m sure. Blimey, you can’t help thinking it.’

  I filed the interview at 6.00 p.m. and at 7.30 p.m. I was on stage for the show. This is a lovely theatre (Frank Matcham, 1901) and the audience was perfect. Twenty minutes in I had found all the energy I needed. Tonight there really was magic in the air. Halfway through the performance Andrew C. Wadsworth said to me in the wings, ‘This is one of my happiest ever nights in the theatre.’

  THURSDAY 3 OCTOBER 2002

  I am on the train back to Victoria, writing up my interview with Edwina [Currie]. She has been giving me a masterclass in the art of adultery. ‘Only meet your lover every two weeks,’ she counsels. ‘If you leave it much longer between encounters, it’s harder to recover the feeling. If you meet too frequently, you get completely overwhelmed. You can get addicted to this sort of thing, you know, so it’s unwise to be doing it every week or every night. Once a fortnight is about right.’

  My friend knows of what she speaks. In 1984, when she was thirty-seven and a recently elected backbench MP, she embarked on a four-year affair with John Major, then forty-one and a government whip. Her revelation of the affair [in her parliamentary diaries, published this week] has brought the world’s press to a handsome, converted malthouse in Nutfield, Surrey, where, with cameras, microphones and notebooks at the ready, they are encamped around the self-confessed adulteress’s front door. Because I am a chum and have been invited to lunch, I slip in through the back door unnoticed.

  It is a tasty lunch, prepared and served by Edwina’s new husband, John Jones, sixty-one, a good-humoured chain-smoking former Metropolitan Police detective, who seems to have the measure of his wife. When Edwina shows him a picture of her and me together at Oxford and giggles, ‘Doesn’t Gyles look like a young John Major?’, Mr Jones chuckles obligingly, pours out the coffee and says, ‘I’ll leave you two to get on with it.’

  Given the media scrum she has been in all week, and the obloquy that, generally, has been heaped upon her, Edwina is looking remarkably pulled together. ‘I’m shattered,’ she says, ‘but I’m okay.’

  ‘Are you really?’ I ask.

  She doesn’t answer. She claps her hands and laughs. ‘This Sunday I could have talked to the News of the World for £50,000. I’d far rather talk to you for love. Where shall we begin?’

  ‘At the beginning,’ I suggest. ‘When exactly did the affair start?’

  ‘I can’t tell you because I can’t remember. It was in the autumn of 1984. I didn’t write anything down deliberately because it seemed to me the best camouflage was to leave no traces, but in my little appointments diary there’s a big star against a certain date early in December 1984 so I think we’d got there by then.’

  I want to discover things the published diaries don’t reveal. ‘How did you and John Major organise your trysts?’

  There were two elements to it. One was fixing up the assignment. Using the House of Commons messenger service, we’d send each other notes: ‘May we talk later?’ or ‘After the seven o’clock vote?’ We would then leave the Commons separately. I would go to my flat at the back of Victoria station and, a little later, he would come along, ring the doorbell and say, ‘Hello, I’ve got an envelope for you.’ The whip would be bringing me some papers. He’d come upstairs, past Nick Ridley’s flat, and arrive at my door. I’d say, ‘Come in.’ The fact that he was a whip made it all relatively straightforward. He knew the business of the House. He knew when we’d be needed for divisions. I don’t think we ever missed a vote because we were making love.

  ‘Sex is important to you,’ I say, a little awkwardly.

  ‘I like it,’ she says, grinning at me. She opens her eyes wide: ‘I like it, Gyles, I like it … I wish John could have been as good a Prime Minister as he was a lover.’

  I think he was a good Prime Minister. Edwina disagrees. And that’s why she has decided to tell all. ‘There has been this huge mystery as to how the party began to collapse so spectacularly. What happened? Whose fault was it? Was it an accident? I don’t think it was an accident. I think it could have been avoided. I felt I had a duty to report and put in my piece of the jigsaw – and a hell of a big piece it was.’

  ‘Oh come on, Edwina, let’s keep this in perspective. How big a piece was it really? Wasn’t it just a four-year bonk?’

  ‘No, no, not at all.’ She narrows her eyes. Clearly I am missing the point. Patiently she tries to explain:

  ‘There are two puzzles about John Major. The first puzzle w
as how this interesting, warm, intelligent man, who, on a personal basis, was a great guy, could come across to the public as so wooden and boring. He did. We can’t argue with that. But the greater puzzle was how come someone who was a serious risk-taker, a chancer, an imaginative leaper in the dark, someone who was not by nature cautious, suddenly became a man who found it almost impossible to take a decision and whose entire administration was bedevilled by procrastination, incompetence and lack of intelligence?’

  She pauses, smiles coquettishly and raises an eyebrow: ‘Could it be that during the ’80s, when he was a junior minister, he was getting a lot of help and encouragement from certain quarters that wasn’t available later?’

  So it wasn’t the fiasco of the ERM, the rows over the Maastricht Treaty and a rapidly dwindling majority that brought about the demise of John Major’s government. It was the fact that Edwina was no longer on hand to help steel her man and steer the ship of state.

  You couldn’t make it up – but, amazingly, I think she believes it.

  She has not done this for the money – certainly. She has done it because she feels she is being written out of history and wants us to know that she was there. She has done it, too, because John Major (understandably) made no mention of her in his memoirs and that’s rankled.

  The real horror of what she’s done is the hurt she will have caused Norma – the embarrassment that will never go away. I wish she had kept her secret and I tell her so. And to make sure that I don’t give her a false impression as to whose side I am on, at the end of our conversation I produce a piece of paper I have brought with me: