Breaking the Code

by Gyles Brandreth

  Donald told the Frank Benson cricketing story: how Benson advertised for a fast bowler to play Laertes. A fellow applied. Someone said, ‘He’s a wonderful fast bowler – not sure if he can play Laertes.’ Said Benson: ‘Any good fast bowler can play Laertes.’

  Judi Dench told a sweet story about being in The Promise with Ian – and so nervous on first night she said to Ian, ‘I’m just going to concentrate on the front row – focus on the three seats in the centre of the row and think that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are sitting there.’

  Said Ian, ‘They’d be sitting in the one seat, surely?’

  Happy event. Des Barrit fun, Tony Sher fun. Michael Wood fun. Also of the party, and sweet, David Warner – my first Hamlet, 1965.

  Post-show, no one seemed to know where to go for the fireworks. The riverside – the Swan garden – the Dell? We saw them through the trees with Susie Sainsbury. Then we had a bite of Indian and joined the party in the tent. We didn’t stay because it does get repetitive. Alex Jennings – ‘loved you in The Alchemist’, said Michèle; Mark Rylance – ‘loved you in Boeing-Boeing’; Simon Russell Beale – ‘loved you in … Goodnight!’

  And so to bed, weary but mellow. Good to have shared a stage with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. Long overdue, of course.

  THURSDAY 10 MAY 2007

  By tube to Ladroke Grove. Sit facing Harriet Walter on the train. She comes over. She’s on her way to Brick Lane to rehearse a play about Fallujah. I tell her I’m going to Michael Berkeley’s house to record Private Passions for Radio 3. She says he’s nice and I needn’t feel intimidated by his musical knowledge: I just have to concentrate on his hair, not so much a comb-over as a pubic ridge across an otherwise totally bald brow … We talked about the National Portrait Gallery and I said she needed to get in to ensure her immortality. She said that didn’t bother her any more. It had once. They’d rejected a drawing of her done by Tony Sher. Pity. A cartoon by Irving of Ellen Terry would be of interest, wouldn’t it?

  Arrived at Michael Berkeley’s way too early: a tall, narrow Victorian house where they’ve been since 1982 – that’s when it was decorated. In the kitchen, a huge table covered with old newspapers, books, bills, old cups of coffee … on the stove last night’s bread pudding in one pan, the cold greens in another … a stray cat (literally) on the floor … Michael was amiable. We talked of past guests – Harriet, Barry Humphries (as himself & Dame Edna – but not in costume), John Amis and the programme that was pulled because he told the story of Frank Muir saying, when he heard that Donizetti had died through an excess of masturbation, ‘So he literally died by his own hand.’

  Just now: William Archer called. He said, ‘Is that Mr Brandreth? This is Mr Archer – William Archer, son of Jeffrey’ – he could have been Jeffrey! Extraordinary. He’s researching a project on Conan Doyle. I’ll help him if I can.

  And news just in – it’s on the radio as I write … A decade and a week after the election that swept him in (and swept me out), Tony Blair is resigning. ‘I’ve been Prime Minister of this country for just over ten years. I think that’s long enough, not only for me, but also for the country, and sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down.’ He steps down officially on 27 June.

  TUESDAY 12 JUNE 2007

  The Association of Interior Specialists at the Dorchester. This is my life now. The Drywall has changed the world. The days of wet plaster are long gone! Nice crowd. Afterwards, a cappuccino at Grosvenor House and then I walked all the way to Central Office for the ‘Final Farewell to Smith Square’.704

  The sun shone. I walked via Curzon Street (Benjamin Disraeli lived here – and ‘the last courtesan’, whoever she may have been) and across the park. Around the Home Office a police cordon was being set up – it was chaos, but it wasn’t a bomb: a building that had collapsed.

  At 32 Smith Square it was all our yesterdays … Past chairmen, past leaders … Chris Patten (he didn’t linger), Jeremy Hanley, Michael Ancram, Maurice Saatchi, Norman Lamont, John Gummer, Ken Baker – even Iain Duncan Smith. I was there as MC and to conduct the auction. We raised £155,000. David [Cameron] arrived halfway through … Jean Searle OBE came over and whispered, ‘The leader is here’… I introduced him – explained that an erotic charge had suddenly shot through the room and that we had to get on with it before his hair began to collapse … He was looking very bouffanted – incredibly crisp: the suit, the shirt, the haircut utterly immaculate – quite perfect, almost unreal.

  I introduced ‘the next Conservative Prime Minister’, who took to the stage and began (unfortunately) with my Anglo-Welsh joke not knowing I’d done it half an hour before705 … It didn’t matter. He spoke well – but, curiously, there was no magic in the air. When Mrs T. or John Major spoke I always felt oddly moved … Michèle said later: ‘He isn’t Prime Minister yet. The office gives the aura.’

  When we were both done, David said to me, ‘You’re brilliant.’

  I said to him, ‘You’re brilliant.’

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we agree on everything. We always have.’ He said he was going to the Ritz to have dinner with the Barclay brothers – ‘but I’m going to call you. I need you writing speeches for me. I need new jokes. I can count on you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. And he can. I will do his bidding – even though I know the jokes I give him won’t be used and my best advice (‘you don’t need to be funny: you don’t even need to be liked; you need to be heroic, you need to inspire’) will be routinely ignored.

  John Cope (now our Chief Whip in the Lords) stopped me as I was leaving. ‘I haven’t always approved of everything you’ve done, but tonight I approved completely…’ That was a nice thing to say – and made my day.

  THURSDAY 28 JUNE 2007

  This morning I woke up in the City of Chester. Last night I addressed the Chester Business Club. In ten years nothing here seems to have changed – at all.

  On the phone from the hotel room just after eight I did a bit on the Today programme – about the Queen and her Prime Ministers. Gordon Brown has ‘kissed hands’ on his appointment and completed his Cabinet. David Miliband is Foreign Secretary. Why not? Jacqui Smith is Home Secretary. Why? Alistair Darling is Chancellor – good. And down the list: Des Browne, John Denham, Ruth Kelly, Andy Burnham … some of them will be excellent, I’m sure. Many of the best of the ministers in my time – Tony Newton, John MacGregor, David Hunt, David Curry, Roger Freeman etc. – were outstanding, but barely noticed beyond the villages of Westminster and Whitehall. I wish them well. We need them to do well.

  The merry-go-round keeps turning. I enjoyed my ride, but I’m happy not to be on it any more.

  657 Frank Dobson, Labour MP for Holborn & St Pancras since 1979; Secretary of State for Health 1997–9.

  658 Derek Conway (b.1953), Conservative MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham, 1983–97, and a colleague of GB’s in the Whips’ Office, eventually found work as chief executive of the Cats’ Protection League. He later returned to Parliament as Edward Heath’s successor as MP for Old Bexley & Sidcup, 2001, falling from grace in 2008 over the misuse of parliamentary expenses.

  659 James Hewitt, former British household cavalry officer and lover of the Princess of Wales.

  660 John Whittingdale OBE, Conservative MP for South Colchester & Maldon 1992–7, Maldon since 1997; political secretary to Margaret Thatcher, 1988–92.

  661 The referendum, held on 7 May 1998, asked the question: ‘Are you in favour of the government’s proposals for a Greater London Authority, made up of an elected mayor and a separately elected assembly?’ Just 34.1 per cent of the electorate voted, with 72.01 per cent voting Yes and 27.99 per cent voting No. Jeffrey Archer was hoping to be the Conservative Party’s first London mayoral candidate.

  662 Nickolas Grace, English actor, still remembered as Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited.

  663 Lynda Bellingham, English actress, still remembered as the mum in the Oxo commercials.

  664 Sarah
Macaulay married Gordon Brown at his home in Fife on 3 August 2000.

  665 Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007), Pakistani politician, President of the Oxford Union, 1976. The first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, she was twice Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–90, 1993–6); assassinated at an election rally in Rawalpindi.

  666 Julian Clary, English camp comedian and writer.

  667 At the British Comedy Awards in December 1993; both Lamont and Clary were presenting awards that night.

  668 From 16 to 19 December 1998, in response to Iraq’s failure to comply with certain United Nations Security Council resolutions, US and UK forces bombed Iraqi targets in an operation codenamed Desert Fox.

  669 In the event, Neil Hamilton, having already dropped his libel action against The Guardian over the ‘cash for questions’ affair, lost his libel action against Mohammed Al-Fayed in December 1999 and lost the appeal in December 2000. Unable to pay his legal fees, he was declared bankrupt in May 2001 and discharged from bankruptcy three years later.

  670 Following his unsuccessful libel action against The Guardian, in 1999 Jonathan Aitken was charged with perjury and perverting the cause of justice and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, of which he served seven.

  671 On 9 September 1999, in an interview with The Times, Michael Portillo, who was hoping to become the Conservative candidate in the forthcoming Kensington & Chelsea by-election, admitted to ‘some homosexual experiences as a young person’.

  672 Amanda Platell, Australian journalist, press secretary to William Hague, 1997–2001.

  673 Adam Boulton, English journalist, political editor of Sky News since 1989.

  674 Though a friend of Edwina Currie since their university days, GB had no inkling of her affair with John Major. In March 1997, GB had reported in his diary John Major remarking that he imagined Edwina was then knocking on ‘quite a few publishers’ doors’, but he did not realise the significance of the observation until the publication of her Diaries: 1987−92 in 2002.

  675 On 19 July 2001 Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. On 21 July 2003 he was released on licence, after serving half of his sentence.

  676 Peter Tatchell, Australian-born political campaigner and gay rights activist.

  677 Sir Christopher Lee, leading English film actor, particularly associated with horror films.

  678 Geoffrey Atkinson produced Rory Bremner, Who Else? from 1993 and, from 1999 to 2010, Bremner, Bird and Fortune.

  679 Paul Burrell RVM (b.1958), former footman to the Queen and butler to Diana, Princess of Wales.

  680 Conrad Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, Canadian-born newspaper publisher and author, later imprisoned on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice; married, as her fourth husband, to Barbara Amiel, British-Canadian journalist.

  681 She stood down in 2010, having been caught up in the MPs’ expenses scandal. She over-claimed for the mortgage interest on her second home, and was told to pay back some £7,000. She was succeeded as MP for Beckenham by Colonel Bob Stewart, commander of the 1st battalion, Cheshire Regiment, when GB first arrived in Chester.

  682 She later became a Liberal Democrat councilor in Plymouth and a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate in the 2005 and 2010 general elections.

  683 Portillo returned to Parliament as MP for Kensington & Chelsea (1999–2005) following the death of Alan Clark. He was now shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1 February 2000 to 18 September 2001.

  684 Baron McColl of Dulwich from 1989, physician, surgeon and politician; PPS to John Major in the House of Lords, 1994–7.

  685 William Hague led the Conservatives to defeat in the general election on 7 June 2001 and resigned as leader on 13 September 2001. The election result gave Labour 40.7 per cent of the vote; the Conservatives 31.7 per cent; and the Liberal Democrats, under Charles Kennedy, 18.3 per cent.

  686 The former BBC correspondent, Martin Bell had said he would only serve one term as MP for Tatton (1997–2001) and was now standing as an independent candidate in Brentwood and Ongar, the seat held by Eric Pickles. He came second in the poll, securing 32 per cent of the vote.

  687 They were married in July 2002 and divorced in December 2010.

  688 They didn’t and following Hague’s post-election resignation the candidates to succeed him included Michael Ancram, David Davis, Michael Portillo, Kenneth Clarke and Iain Duncan Smith. Under new rules, Conservative MPs only voted in the initial rounds of the contest, and the lowest candidate in each round was eliminated; in the final round, involving the membership of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith secured 60.7 per cent of the popular vote and Kenneth Clarke secured 39.3 per cent.

  689 On 11 September 2001 a series of four coordinated attacks were launched by the terrorist group al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington DC. The attacks killed almost 3,000 people and, as a mark of respect, the announcement of Iain Duncan Smith’s victory in the Conservative leadership contest was delayed until 13 September.

  690 The show was conceived by GB and its title changed to Zipp! 100 Musicals in 100 Minutes or Your Money Back. With a cast of five, it won the Most Popular Show award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2002, toured the UK and played in the West End at the Duchess Theatre.

  691 In the event, Duncan Smith struggled on until 29 October 2003, when he lost a No Confidence vote among Conservative MPs, 75–90. The parliamentary party then coalesced around the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Michael Howard, who was elected leader, unopposed.

  692 In the event, Tony Blair secured parliamentary approval to send UK forces into battle against Saddam Hussein on 18 March 2003 and most Conservatives supported him. 217 MPs – Kenneth Clarke, John Gummer, and thirteen other Conservatives, all the Liberal Democrats and 139 Labour backbenchers – backed an amendment opposing the government’s stance on Iraq, with 396 opposing the motion. A motion backing the government’s position was then passed by 412 votes to 149.

  693 Cook resigned from the Cabinet on 17 March 2003.

  694 Ed Vaizey, Michael Howard’s speech-writer, MP for Wantage since 2005 and Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries since 2010.

  695 American journalist and publisher of The Spectator magazine whose three-year affair with Home Secretary David Blunkett was revealed by the News of the World in August 2004. Blunkett resigned on 15 December and the News of the World revealed that Ms Quinn had also had an affair with the journalist Simon Hoggart.

  696 It didn’t. David Blunkett resigned from the Cabinet on 2 November 2005 in the wake of press coverage of his extra-parliamentary interests during his time out of government.

  697 Four terrorists detonated four bombs: three in quick succession on London Underground trains across the city and, later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. As well as the four bombers, fifty-two civilians were killed and over 700 more were injured in the attacks.

  698 The first ballot of MPs was held on 18 October 2005. David Davis came top of the poll with 62 votes, followed by David Cameron, 56, Liam Fox, 42, and Kenneth Clarke, 38. Clarke was eliminated and in the second round most of his support went to David Cameron who now secured 90 votes, followed by David Davis with 57 and Liam Fox with 51. Fox was eliminated and the Conservative Party membership was offered a choice between Cameron and Davis. Of the 198,844 members who voted, 32.4 per cent voted for Davis and 67.6 per cent for Cameron.

  699 GB’s 2004 book, Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage, formed the basis of a television series made by ITN for Channel 5.

  700 Having worked alongside David Frost at TV-am in the ’80s, GB was a regular newspaper reviewer on Frost on Sunday, appearing in the 500th and final edition on 29 May 2005. Sunday AM with Andrew Marr replaced the Frost programme from 11 September 2005.

  701 Labour MP for Darlington 1992–2010; in Tony Blair’s Cabinet 1998–2003, 2004–5.

  702 T
he film of GB’s 1996 novel Who Is Nick Saint? is yet to materialise.

  703 Whipping It Up, starring Richard Wilson, opened at the Bush Theatre, London, in November 2006 and later transferred to the West End. Stephen Thompson went on to write episodes of Doctor Who and Sherlock.

  704 32 Smith Square served as Conservative Central Office between 1958 and 2003. The building stood empty until 2007 when it was sold for £30.5 million to Harcourt Developments who hoped to redevelop it as flats until the 2008 credit crunch derailed the plan. It is now (perhaps ironically, given its heritage) Europe House, the London base of the European Parliament and the European Commission.

  705 ‘I am Anglo-Welsh. My grandparents were Anglo-Welsh. My parents were Anglo-Welsh. Indeed, my parents burnt down their own cottage.’

  AFTERWORD

  JULY 2014

  I still keep a diary. I am writing this on Sunday 13 July 2014. It has been a happy week. I went to a party, I went to the theatre, I recorded an episode of Just a Minute, I did a day’s filming for The One Show, I worked on my new book. Yesterday, Michèle and I took one of our six grandchildren for a day-trip to the Isle of Wight. In 1990 I was forty-two and burning to be a Member of Parliament. Now I am sixty-six and quite happy just to be ‘Grandpa B’.

  Today is the final of the 2014 World Cup. I don’t know who will win because I am not entirely sure who is taking part. Tomorrow David Cameron starts his government reshuffle. That’s a game I shall be following. (I still take an interest in politics. I still contribute the occasional line to a prime ministerial speech.) As a rule, of course, reshuffles make no difference, but this one might.706

  Tomorrow, too, I am due to deliver all the material for the new edition of this book. It’s a pity it wasn’t published this week. I have been overwhelmed with ‘media interest’. A dozen calls a day, at least. Everyone – Newsnight, ITN, Channel 4, all manner of newspaper and radio outlets, stations I’d never heard of – wanting a line on the Whips’ Office – the ‘black book’ – the ‘dirt list’ – Peter Morrison – paedophilia… Was there a paedophile ring at Westminster? Did the Whips’ Office know about it? Did they hush it up?