Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  TUESDAY 21 DECEMBER 2004

  With Eileen Atkins & Bill Shepherd to Sonny’s. Eileen is very funny. She told us about her Women’s Reading Group. She joined at the suggestion of John Standing, whose wife Sarah is a founder … and it turns out that Kimberley Quinn695 is a member – and the personification of charm and intelligence: Eileen was almost ready to bed her herself … The revelations of Kimberley’s complex relations with David Blunkett and Simon Hoggart and heaven knows who else have warmed our cockles on these cold winter nights. Anyway, the point is that Eileen wrote to Kimberley to commiserate and, to show fellow-feeling, told a story of one of her own past embarrassments … and Kimberley sent a lovely eleven-page response full of heart and hurt and humiliation … Eileen said that all eleven members of the group had written to Kimberley with a confession of their own past wickedness, including Sarah Standing – who is perfect and could only confess to having ‘been cross with John once’ and feeling so bad about it! (‘Sarah is perfect, of course,’ said Eileen. ‘Michèle, you are probably perfect too – but your saving grace is you have edge.’)

  On the night of the last Reading Group meeting – when Eileen was making the supper for it – at about three minutes to eight, Harold Pinter telephoned. ‘Eileen, will you do my birthday party?’ For a moment, Eileen thought he meant cater for it – then she remembered going to some dreadful evening at the Pinters where people read poetry and assumed she was wanted as a kind of cabaret for the party and said, ‘Oh, Harold, I hate those sort of things.’ Harold responded bleakly, ‘But you’ve done one of my plays before. I thought you liked them.’ Then the penny dropped. Eileen is going to do a short tour then a season at the Arts in The Birthday Party. She’d like Jude Law as the young man, but the producers won’t even ask him.

  2005

  FRIDAY 6 MAY 2005

  The general election result was entirely predictable. Blair is back, but with a majority down to 66 from 160. Labour lost forty-seven seats; we gained thirty-three; the Lib Dems gained eleven. The Lib Dems did well, with a 3.7 per cent swing their way. Labour had a swing against them of 5.5 per cent. The swing our way was just 0.7 per cent. Michael did valiantly – he’s a good guy – but we were never going to win. When will we win again? And with whom? And does it matter? (Yes, I think it does. I am not really part of it anymore, but I do still care.)

  The Cabinet line-up is entirely predictable. Blair, Prescott, Gordon Brown still chewing his nails and champing at the bit … How long can Blair keep him at bay? Jack Straw is still at the Foreign Office. Blunkett is back – at Work and Pensions. Will that work?696

  THURSDAY 7 JULY 2005

  Yesterday London won the bid to become host city for the 2012 summer Olympics. Well done Seb. (And, indeed, well done Tony Blair. According to Seb, Blair was key and completely hands-on.) Today, London was rocked by bombs.697 I am calm about it now, but it happened this morning, during the rush hour, and I just held my breath, stomach-churning, until we heard from the children. Aphra [an environmental economist] was at DEFRA in Victoria. Benet [a barrister] was at a solicitor’s in Holborn. He went in by bike. They were fine, but fifty-plus have been killed. We were due to go to the British Forces Foundation polo match at Sandhurst. We went, not knowing whether or not it would be cancelled but feeling, somehow, ‘the show must go on’. It did. The Prince of Wales didn’t appear, but Prince Harry was there and, I must say, is very impressive on horseback.

  THURSDAY 6 OCTOBER 2005

  A happy outing to Blackpool for the Conservative Party conference at the Winter Gardens. Seb warmed up for me; I warmed up for Michael; Michael warmed the hearts of the crowd with a witty, well-judged, well-delivered farewell. We were all rewarded with standing ovations. Yes, they can still stand – which, given their age, is impressive.

  All the leadership candidates were on parade and I wished each of them well because they are all friends and each one has his strengths. But I am sorry to say Ken Clarke is now definitely too fat and too old. Is David Cameron too glossy and too young? He will be thirty-nine on Sunday. He’s canny, he’s real, he’s my kind of Conservative: pragmatic, middle-of-the-road, not obsessive about anything but generally right about most things. And he’s very charming. He hugged me as I was about to on stage to do my bit. ‘We’ll meet soon,’ he said. ‘We must. We really must.’

  David Davis blew it with his speech yesterday. It was lacklustre and wooden. It didn’t work. It didn’t seduce; it didn’t move. I saw him last night, in the hotel foyer, looking so bleak. I like him, but I think I know his ways too well. He was outstanding as DD of the SS, but colleagues won’t see him as Prime Minister: they don’t trust him enough. I travelled back on the train with Liam Fox. I found him sitting alone in First Class. I told him how well he’s done this week – and he has. But there is something about him that’s unsettling, too. He’s sharp, shrewd, hugely ambitious and achieving, but I think he’s a risk too far … Ken’s moment has past: DD and Liam will come a cropper. If we want to win – and win next time – it has to be Cameron. He’s new. He has the wow factor. And the energy. And steady hands. In fact, I don’t think there is a choice: he is the future now.698

  2006

  TUESDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2006

  Making my TV series about the Queen699 I went to interview Mary Soames – Lady of the Garter and Winston Churchill’s daughter. She keeps a bronze of her father’s hand on her desk. It was taken from life and, as she said, is extraordinary because the hand is so small and so delicate.

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you can shake his hand now’ – and she held it out for me … So there you go – another ambition fulfilled. I’ve shaken hands with Winston Churchill.

  Our next stop was Sir Edward Ford, long-serving courtier and the man who conjured up the phrase ‘annus horribilis’. He is ninety-five now and completely charming. He said that when the Queen was young her attractiveness lay in her ‘complete lack of flirtatiousness’. Other princesses would flirt – Princess Margaret, Princess Marina, Princess Diana … ‘The Queen is not flirtatious at all and never has been. That’s her secret.’ Most people just gush about Her Majesty. Ford was precise and very interesting. ‘She lacks imagination,’ he said, ‘which may have helped keep her steady. Her key strength is that she is blessed with an abundance of common sense.’

  SUNDAY 9 APRIL 2006

  Went to review the papers on the Andrew Marr programme. (Feeling a tad guilty because I did it so often with David and David was so hurt when they dropped him.700 A year on, he’s still obsessing about it – and ‘the awfulness’ of his replacement, ‘that dreadful little man with the big ears’ as Carina [Frost] terms him. In fact, AM is very nice and rather good.) I was on with Katie Melua (singer – pretty but rather serious) and Alan Milburn701 (MP – not so pretty, nor so serious). In make-up, he said he was still considering standing against Gordon Brown when Tony Blair goes. ‘Will anyone stand against him?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone should.’

  And if Gordon forms a government, I asked, will you be part of it?

  ‘It’s highly unlikely he’d want me, though it would be a good idea if he did. I’d certainly consider it.’

  It’s quite comical how seriously politicians can take themselves. Milburn reckons he’s a force to be reckoned with – and perhaps he is? What do I know? (Let’s remember: not so long ago Michael Ancram, Alan Duncan, Tim Yeo all thought they might have a chance of becoming Tory leader. ‘Vanity, vanity…’ as Mrs T. used to say.)

  Also on the programme: Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, good with the sound bites, eyes blinking with the contact lenses – and charmingly in the thrall of Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State. If Blair is Bush’s poodle, Jack is Condi’s chihuahua. The other day, when they flew together to the Gulf in the Secretary of State’s Boeing 757, Condi offered Jack her on-board bed. Shattered (as all British politicians are) he gratefully accepted and went to snuggle down beneath the Secret
ary of State’s duvet in the front cabin. Mid-flight he got up to go to the loo and found himself stepping over her body in the galley: she was fast asleep, stretched out on the floor. ‘I just assumed she had another berth at the back of the plane … I never thought she was going to have to doss down on the floor.’

  MONDAY 2 OCTOBER 2006

  With Kate Hoey and Alison Moore-Gwyn [from the National Playing Fields Association] I went to see Seb [Coe] at Olympic Towers – actually a splendid suite of offices high up in the Barclays HQ at Canary Wharf. The place was awash with beautiful young PAs – ‘all chosen personally’, said Seb … And then in came the Communications Director. She was huge – I mean truly, preposterously large. We’d gone to give our presentation on what we wanted to see as the ‘Olympics Legacy’ and our opening slide was all about the need to fight obesity … It was a good meeting, but where it leads I’m not sure. Seb is very at ease with it all. Being a double Olympic gold medallist helps. I think his legacy is not in doubt. MBE, done. OBE, done. Peerage, done. KBE at the New Year. I think CH once the Olympics are done. OM around 2020? Or maybe the Garter. Watch this space.

  FRIDAY 13 OCTOBER 2006

  We all need a legacy. (‘Legacy’ is the buzzword of the age.) What’s mine to be? (No sniggering at the back, please.) Seriously, what’s mine to be? Some people rate my biography of the Queen and Prince Philip – that might last. And I still have hopes for the movie of Nick Saint.702 And I did introduce the 1994 Marriage Act enabling civil weddings to take place in venues other than register offices: in its small way that has contributed to a happy day in a lot of people’s lives. And every time I walk through Trafalgar Square and see something interesting on that plinth I know I’m the one who made that happen … And today I had lunch at The Ivy with Steve Thompson who has written a play about the Whips’ Office inspired by my diaries.703

  FRIDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2006

  To No. 1 Knightsbridge; to Al-Jazeera. I have seen the future: it’s Muslim. I’m going to be part of it. In a tiny basement studio sits David Frost, facing one camera. There are two other cameras in the room: they appear dormant. Behind David is the logo: Frost Over the World. We are piloting a segment of his new show – airing for the first time next week. ‘A Conversation with the Four Corners of the World’: Al-Jazeera have created ‘hubs’ in Washington DC, Kuala Lumpur, Doha and London and four of us are to have a global chat about the issues of the hour wherever we are … The notion is fine: the reality is dire: the guy in Washington seems to be on a three-second time-delay; the lady in Kuala Lumpur wants to read from a prepared script.

  FRIDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2006

  Premiere of Frost Over the World – David (yellow tie, yellow socks, hands shaking so badly – not nerves: drink and life taking its toll) – I did stuff about Britain’s global brands (Frost, James Bond, the royal family – Woolworths are bringing out their William & Kate wedding souvenirs already) – three parts to the show: a ‘debate’ on religion; the global ‘conversation’; and Tony Blair. David scored ’cos Blair conceded that Iraq had been ‘pretty much a disaster’. Headlines everywhere. David delivers for Al-Jazeera!

  Iraq, ‘pretty much a disaster’ – is that Blair’s legacy? What else has there been? At the start we got the minimum wage and independence for the Bank of England. Has there been anything else – in terms of a lasting legacy? Civil partnerships. That’s good, but that’s it. And now he’s being hounded out of office by his impatient Chancellor and ungrateful backbenchers. The much-maligned John Major managed to keep the show on the road for seven years with virtually no majority and a party split at the heart over Europe. And, pace the ERM debacle, we ended up with sound finances and peace in Northern Ireland. And, incredibly, even the privatisation of the railways seems to have worked. What’s more, John Major is normal – charmingly so. But there’s something about Blair that is really quite strange … Ten years ago Major was written off completely and Blair was the man who walked on water. Now Blair is disappearing fast beneath the waves and, as time goes by, I reckon we are going to find that my friend Mr Major’s reputation grows and grows. Wouldn’t that be nice? And as it should be.

  2007

  FRIDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2007

  From Derby to St Pancras (being rebuilt) to Millbank to record How to be Chancellor for Radio 4 – Lamont very mellow, Clarke on song … Is Blair in free-fall? Adored in the US, derided at home, he is being buffeted on all sides. I bumped into Peter Hain, who is breezily advocating an elected House of Lords – regardless of the PM’s policy (if he has one). On to Al-Jazeera, where I bumped into a trim but bug-eyed Andrew Lloyd Webber (‘Why are you here?’ ‘I don’t know. David asked me.’) The ‘global conversation’ quite hopeless – the girl from Kuala Lumpur unbroadcastable, I’d have thought… David: ‘So good to have you here – a joy.’ On to Bertorelli’s and Geoff Atkinson – the world now ‘beyond parody’, according to Geoff. He is obsessed with the government’s corrupt core and had some complicated story about a property scam that appeared to involve Meacher, Mandelson, Prescott, Blair and an estate agent with an outlet in Putney … I didn’t understand a word of it, but Geoff’s heart is good and he bought the lunch.

  WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 2007

  On 14 March 1991, I was chosen to succeed Peter Morrison as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the City of Chester. It was a night to remember – seated between Sir Peter and the Duke of Westminster, the acrid smoke rising relentlessly from their forever-burning cigarettes. What’s Peter’s legacy? The PPS who slept while Margaret Thatcher was turned out of office. That’s it, I fear. But why was Peter permanently sozzled? When he was first elected he was twenty-nine, tall and slim, good-looking in a pink-cheeked, curly-headed, English sort of way. When he died, aged fifty-one, he’d become gross, grotesque. He looked seventy. What drove him to drink? And how did he die? Was it a heart attack or did he throw himself down the stairs? And why did he leave instructions that there should be no memorial service – no memorial? Was he a paedophile? Is that the dark secret? I believe he was cautioned once for ‘cottaging’ in a public lavatory with young men – but they weren’t children. Rod Richards and others are convinced he was implicated in the abuse at the children’s home in Wrexham, but beyond rumour and conjecture what do we know?

  Anyway, today, sixteen years on, we celebrated my darling wife’s birthday in quite a different way – but, by bizarre coincidence, the Duke of Westminster was once again on parade. It was a really good day. Lunch at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons; a drive to Cholsey to visit Agatha Christie’s grave; a race back to town to catch Boeing-Boeing at the Comedy Theatre – all-star cast (Mark Rylance sublime), all-star audience (Jamie Oliver and friends). And then, at 10.15 p.m., supper at Le Caprice – where we were followed in by the Duke and Duchess of Westminster. Gerald – in the wake of the revelations about his penchant for prostitutes, courtesy of last month’s News of the World – did not look well: grim-visaged, brick-red complexion, overweight, dog-tired, and still smoking. Michèle thought he noticed us. I imagine he didn’t – or, if he did, couldn’t quite place us. It was odd seeing him there, tonight of all nights. We felt luckier and happier than the richest man in the land.

  SUNDAY 29 APRIL 2007

  Arrive in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare birthday celebrations at 3.55 p.m., get out of the car and step up to the Radio Coventry & Warwicks microphone for three minutes. Turn around and there is Susie Sainsbury – a good woman. She could be lolling in a bath of Sainsbury champagne; instead she’s giving her all to the Royal Shakespeare Company. She’s deputy chairman, Chair of Development, Chair of the American Committee. She’s raised £101 million for the capital funds. But all the Stratford Herald reports is that they are £14 million short of their target.

  Somewhat surprisingly, Gordon Brown is here. Susie is rather cynical about Gordon. She thinks he’s ‘come to be seen’ and brought the children with him. ‘He’s burnishing his English credentials.’ I suppose David [Sainsbury] is a Blairite and the
y are all anxious about what will happen when Gordon at long last becomes PM. (I can tell them. It will be a shambles. No one who still bites his fingernails aged fifty-six should be allowed to lead the country. Gordon is an obsessive micro-manager with a short fuse and a vile temper. He can be charming and civilised, but after a six-month honeymoon, it will all unravel – there will be blood on the carpet, if not in the streets. My friend David Cameron will be PM within three years, without a doubt.) Susie offers us the remainder of Gordon Brown’s little lemon tarts. They are delicious.

  I am here to host the Shakespeare quiz.

  Two star-studded teams, both alike in dignity: I appoint Ian McKellen and Juliet Stevenson as captains. In the audience, Harriet Walter, coughing. Ian in very happy form. He’s come dressed as a mad scientist – beady eyes, King Lear’s beard, lab assistant’s coat and the Macbeth tartan tie … He’s full of Lear: ‘Did it last night. It drains you. But then one night we just flew. It simply happened. The question is, once we’re there, will I be able to act what I now feel?’ … He delivered for us in full measure. When Donald Sinden got the question right about how much older Anne Hathaway was than Shakespeare (eight years), Ian said, ‘Of course, Donald had the advantage of knowing them both personally.’