Liar-in-Chief Archer asked
for money to attend Daily Express news conference
My old chum Christopher Wilson’s piece on Liar-in-Chief Jeffrey Archer brought me back to a bizarre lunch with the man in the Savoy Grill in 1989.
He was researching Exclusive, a new play he was writing which, as the title none-too-subtly hints, was set in a Fleet Street newspaper. It was not a success despite a stellar cast of Paul Schofield, Eileen Atkins and Alec McCowan and was taken off from the Strand Theatre after just a few weeks.
As we know, Archer had been a pal of Nick Lloyd from when Nick was at Oxford and, as Wislon reminded us, Jeff was not. He was IN Oxford, not at, studying for a diploma in education, a one-year course at a sort of poly attached to Brasenose College.
Claiming to have been at Oxford was just one in the long list of Archer’s lies. Another that we know about was saying his father had been awarded a medal in WW2 when in fact he hadn’t. Rather than a decorated hero William Archer had been up at the Old Bailey on fraud charges but skipped bail and escaped to New York where he worked as a chewing gum salesman.
Other ‘untruths’ include being at Wellington. Which he had; Wellington School in Somerset which he left at 16 with three O levels, but not the much grander Wellington College in Berkshire as he liked everyone to assume.
Anyway, back to the Savoy and the plush banquettes of the Grill. I had met Archer before which is why Nick asked me to see if we could be of help with his research. Archer, despite his many layered life, is curiously one-dimensional in his personality. It’s the sort of thing you grasp pretty quickly when lunching with someone. They either interest you or they don’t. He did, but in all the wrong ways.
’Well here’s what I need Alan; I’d like to spend a week or two as an executive on the Express, attending both morning and evening conference and be part of the decision-making process. And (cue drum roll) I’d like to be paid for my time helping you all there.’ (I have not bothered with the multiple exclamation marks after that final request because you have mentally added them already I assume.)
Other than that, there was little small talk or real conversation except that we were not lunching at his ‘usual table’ but one that the legendary maitre’d Angelo Maresca had chosen for us.
Back at the New Lubianka on Blackfriars Bridge I sauntered in to see Nick and relayed the list of requirements, none of which, I need hardly tell you, was acceded to. But that delightful Texan theatre director Michael Rudman (at the time Mr Felicity Kendal) who really had been at Oxford with Nick (they were both at Teddy Hall), was to be in charge of Exclusive which no doubt explains why the cast included such distinguished actors. Rudman came to the Express a couple of times, got a feel for the editorial floor and from memory attended one afternoon conference. He neither asked for, expected, nor received any payment.
I have written of my other encounters with Archer on these pages before, most notably when I recruited him as auctioneer for a charity dinner I had helped organise at the Dorchester. He had explained that he might be a bit late as he was doing another auction a few doors away at Grosvenor House but he arrived just in time for dinner.
His normally cheery, cocky mode had deserted him but he had turned up and for that I was grateful. The auction went very well, raising many thousands for disadvantaged kids and I said my sincere thanks. That was a Friday evening.
Come Sunday morning I found out why our star turn had been in a grump. On the Friday morning just hours before our event, the editor and managing editor of the News of the World had visited him at his penthouse overlooking the Palace of Westminster (‘take the lift to the top, turn left at the Picasso and right at the Pissarro’.)
And not long afterwards the revelations in the NoW led to him being charged with perjury committed during the Daily Star libel trial which did for our friend Lloyd Turner, not just his sacking but his subsequent death of a heart attack just as he was about to join the Daily Mail.
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, son of a bigamist, fraudster and conman who was 64 when Jeff was born, you have a lot to answer for. How plead you?
*****
Mention of Wellington College brings me in my usual perambulatory fashion to the iceberg lettuce. I refer of course to Mary Elizabeth Truss, the subject (gawd help her) of the latest biography by the brilliant Sir Anthony Seldon, former head of Wellington.
Seldon, whom I presume has found a way of dispensing with sleep, has written more than 20 mostly political biographies, all of them well received, and edited or contributed to dozens more. But somehow he still found time to be headmaster of St Dunstan’s College, Brighton College, Wellington and, following the murder by her husband of the head of Epsom College, he took the reins there from his berth as vice-chancellor of Buckingham University.
The tone of his latest is given away in the title ‘Truss at 10: How not to be Prime Minister’ and its 350 pages are based on interviews with ministers, Downing St staff and advisors and comes with the startling revelation that she banned all newspapers from Downing St (this command came at the start of her 49 days when coverage was not so grim.)
The best story, highlighted by Tom Peck in his review of the book in The Times, was that Truss decided to scrap the 45p tax rate without so much as a reference to her hapless chancellor Kwarteng. Alas, he was dining with Sun editor Victoria Newton (fotp) during the only party conference of her time at No 10, when aides arrived to try to take him to one side to inform him of his lover’s, sorry boss’s, decision.
They were unsuccessful and so resorted to hand signals, four fingers raised on one and five on the other. Newton and her political team twigged before Kwarteng did and the game of charades resulted in a rushed announcement by Downing St.
Did the party games extend to cabinet meetings? You know the one, each member had a post-it note on their forehead and he or she had to guess which job they had. It would probably have worked better.
*****
As with Truss, every political life ends in failure. (The old Fleet St maxim was Nothing Succeeds like Failure with unsuitable editors of the Express leaving after a year or two with greatly reduced circulations and rewarded with wheelbarrows full of cash.)
Looking at post-war occupants of No 10 each has one thing they will for ever be remembered for. Here goes:
Churchill (second coming): Brilliant but only in wartime.
Eden: Suez.
Macmillan: Profumo (and grouse moors)
Douglas-Home: Baillie Vass
Wilson first term: Gannex. Second term: Marcia Falkender’s Lavender List.
Callaghan: Crisis, what crisis?
Heath: Three-day week
Thatcher: Didn’t know when her time was up.
Major: Edwina Bloody Currie.
Blair: Iraq
Brown: Selling our gold
Cameron: Brexit.
May: Running through fields of wheat
Johnson: A lying wanker.
Truss: The salad draw’s finest (but she tells us she not done yet. Barking!)
*****
And finally: Dick Dismore complains about the price of a pint and rightly so. Waiting for a friend in the bar of St Ermin’s Hotel, St James’ a small bottle of Peroni set me back £7.47. But having missed a train from Oxted to London recently I had little option but to spend the next 30 minutes in the Wetherspoons next door to the station.
A pint of very good draught Ruddles which filled in the time nicely was precisely £1.60. Yes, I did say a pint. Top marks to Sir Tim Martin who has made a great deal of money by taking very little from us.
ALAN FRAME
29 August 2024
