Anecdotes? It’s the way Basham tells’em
I've been urging my old friend Brian Basham to write his memoir and he's finally started. Knowing as much I do about his career as the doyen of City PRs it should be a cracker. And a trawl through his mountain of files has unearthed a classic exchange between the Eye and Basham which I reproduce here.
Private Eye, January 26, 1996:
‘Harrods boss Mohamed Fayed continues to cultivate close relations with the Press. Selected hacks were invited to wander through his Knightsbridge store at Christmas time without the bother of having to stop at the till. Now Fayed is said to be in talks with charming PR man Brian Basham about the possibility of taking over the New Statesman, the troubled left-wing weekly.
'Shortly before Christmas when the oily Basham was planning a boardroom putsch, he confided to a fellow-conspirator: "What the magazine needs is more radical lifestyle issues like why is Quaglino's so expensive?”Meanwhile the Harrods boss, pursuing his vendetta against the Major government, is spending large amounts of money preparing dummies for a projected Sunday title. Mohamed denies the money comes from the Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest man. The New Sultan would be a catchy title.’
It attracted this reply from Basham:
'Look here shit-head. How do you manage to get so many things wrong in one fucking article? Some romantic approached Mohamed and suggested he should take over the Statesman. Mohamed asked my opinion and I told him it wasn't right for him and he wasn't right for it. He agreed.
'I planned no boardroom putsch at the Statesman. I just wanted to get rid of the editor because I thought he was bloody useless and there were much better candidates. I've been to Quaglino's once. I thought it was crap. Someone else paid so I don't know how much it cost.
'As for lifestyle, I leave worrying about that to television personalities and their like.
'Oily enough for you?
Yours, Brian Basham’
In fact, the Eye got one thing right in its piece: Fayed was indeed spending a lot of money (more than £70,000 in 1996) on a dummy for a new Sunday mid-market paper, Life on Sunday, aimed to take on the sinking SX and the MoS which was yet to get into its stride. I know because I was its architect and had gathered a pretty formidable team of Christopher Wilson, Mike Molloy, Bill Hagerty, Kate Hadley, John Hill and other considerable talents. For six weeks or more we worked very secret squirrel in rooms in Cavendish Square and produced the paper 'as live', in other words we splashed on our own exclusive and all material was generated in-house. Strictly no Latin.
Wislon, who has a better recall than me (he must have drunk finer quality wines), remembers it thus:
‘Bill Hagerty was the man for all seasons, he seemed to know something about everything, you felt if you asked him to fix a leaking tap he'd have done it while knocking out another sports story. Kate Hadley was at the peak of her form, full of energy and ideas. Everybody brought something to the party. John Hill was at ease no matter what the challenge and Mike Molloy was like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree — twinkly and lovely without casting too much light on proceedings (I remember him spending several days if not weeks working out the profile of a typical Life On Sunday reader which, as it turned out, was somebody rather like him!)'
Wislon (of course) was Cavendish, the gossip columnist, and wrote the great exclusive that David Hockney was to abandon Laurel Canyon for Bridlington where his mother lived. And that's exactly what happened.
The Mirror Group printed our six-section paper in Glasgow on a Monday morning with all the processing done on the previous Friday at its offices in Canary Wharf. But that happened to be the evening that the IRA detonated a massive bomb in the area, killing two and injuring 100. The date was February 9,1996 and a couple of our Art chaps had taken all that we had produced to the Mirror HQ there in the early evening. When we learned of the bomb we tried to reach them but all lines were either down or jammed. We feared the very worst and I had my Tony Fowler moment "Why does everything happen to me?"
By 2am our lads returned unscathed and with the work finished. "Oh we didn't think to ring you". Bloody Art Desk types!
Once printed, I carted the dummy round the big ad agencies to see what they thought and received the warmest of approval, in other words they would recommend it to clients for advertising. It was when I told Fayed that he would have to set aside many millions to a) spend on the launch and b) to see off the opposition, especially from Associated, that he backed out. Another What Might Have Been.
Of course, given what we now know about this monstrous serial abuser, liar and rapist, it was just as well.
*****
Sure enough, it's all unravelling for Trump and his gang of halfwit Putinescas. For good measure this is the latest free lack-of-character reading of the man who thought inviting misogynist racist rapist thug Conor McGregor, (a man with 18 convictions for a cocktail of crimes), to the White House to celebrate St Patrick's Day was a good idea. British writer Nate White says of Trump: “He has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour, no grace.”
In other news, Graydon Carter reveals that in 1984 when he interviewed Trump for GQ he called him a 'tacky braggart' with hands too small for his body, and thus triggered a feud which, happily, lasts to this day. “A short-fingered vulgarian" is the latest iteration of that insult but the best story is from the period when the vulgarian tried to make it up with Carter. This resulted in a photoshoot/makeover for a Trump interview, this time for Vanity Fair. All went reasonably well until he was asked to remove his £1,500 Loro Piana cashmere sweater. Flat refusal because it would muss with his elaborately assembled confection of wispy hair. Stand-off... until the man with little hands despatched someone to get a pair of scissors. Not for the hair alas but for the cutting off of the cashmere.
Trump even invited Carter to his wedding to Marla Maples which resulted in the verdict: “I’ve seen more emotion in an early morning Starbucks line.” The feud continues...
*****
To the Ivy, Granary Square for Richard Compton Miller's 80th bash. It was a great party with the old boy in fine form despite a veritable catalogue of health woes; a broken hip, pneumonia and the Parkinson’s which he has been dealing with for the past year. Compton Miller 1, Parkinson's 0 is the current scoreline.
His beautiful wife Nicola rounded up old friends (well aren't we all dear?) including Charlie Garside, John Blake (marrying Maria in July), Jeremy Gates, Caroline Hendrie, Trudi Pacter and Robin Esser’s lovely widow Tui. Lots of the Ivy's finest canapes and enough wine even for old hacks. John Blake and I were cogitating about the time he, Richard and I worked together on the Evening News in the mid '70s and in no time we were going through the inevitable Where Are They Now exercise.
A memorable evening and what a revelation the new King's Cross is: where once the kerb crawlers crawled the place is now all flood-lit fountains, bars and restaurants and on a balmy March evening hundreds were dining al fresco. How can one tire of London?
*****
It wasn't just us enjoying the delights of a stroll through a great city. At the same time Charles and Camilla were in Belfast and visited Commercial Court in the Cathedral Quarter. They drank whiskey in the Friend at Hand and met staff from the Duke of York, the pub where I went almost daily while learning my trade around the corner at the News Letter. One man who is no longer a barman at the Duke's is Gerry Adams, then very young, sans beard, beret, dark glasses and, as often as not, with a coffin on his shoulder.
Times have truly changed for this fabulous city.
*****
Charlie Rae has been telling this heart-warming tale of the time, when working for Today, he was sent to Moscow in 1991 to find Leila, wife of the brave Oleg Gordievsky who had recently defected to Britain. Find her he did, and while she was making the tea she asked him to answer the phone which he did using the only word of Russian he knew: “Da?” “Oh hello, could I speak to Mrs Gordievsky please, it's the Daily Mail in London.”
“Too late old boy, far too late”, and with that Rae proceeded to drink tea and wrap up the best exclusive of his career.
ALAN FRAME
26 March 2025
