…and politicians

You thought show business was tricky? Wait until you are dealing with cabinet ministers.

I learned first about the tricky behaviour of politicians from a master. During a brief and unsuccessful career as a gossip columnist, I wrote a disobliging paragraph about a young upstart and then-aspiring MP called Jeffrey Archer, who was a member of the Greater London Council at the time. He rang me up and thanked me personally. Of course, as intended, I was taken aback, failed to protest that the item was actually intended to annoy and Jeffrey won our first encounter hands down. Not only that but, being Jeffrey, he probably was grateful for a mention in Town Talk, the page 2 gossip column in the dear old Sunday Express.

It was already clear that I was not cut out for this particular line of the business. I was the ingénue, sent by John London’s Diary in the London Evening News to cover the party for the premiere of The Graduate, who asked her boyfriend the identity of the small black guy with one eye who was obviously “someone”. How was I to recognise Sammy Davis Junior? I was the reporter detailed to find out if Julie Christie was having an affair with Warren Beatty, who took a cup of tea and discussed the state of the film industry with the nice bearded man who answered the door at her house and never considered the possibility that the legendary lothario might have grown a beard since Bonnie and Clyde. It was only three weeks later, when I saw a picture of the same bearded man in Another Newspaper, that I realised my error (which, naturally, I kept to myself ). I turned down dinner with an exciting new talent I interviewed at The Savoy because I already had a date with the BF – and, anyway, who had ever heard of Donald Sutherland?

And, yes, it was me who was sent to doorstep Bill Simpson – or “TV’s Heartthrob Dr Finlay” as he was known – and who allowed my target to escape by going for cigarettes. For the Daily Sketch in New York in 1971, I reported on “Frank Sinatra’s Last Concert” – possibly the first of his last concerts as they continued for a further 24 years – while my report of the first boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden appeared under the headline “Joe Frazier Will Never Fight Again”. Yes, well, look it up. Is it any wonder all of these newspapers went out of business?

So I moved on to politics. I am not sure if the requirement to observe “lobby terms” still holds if the MP in question is now dead, but I shall presume that it does not. Thus it was that I was first told to “eff off ” by an MP, when Denis Healey used those words to me in the Members’ Lobby of the House of Commons (except he didn’t bowdlerise). It was the spring of 1976 and he was standing for the leadership of the Labour Party after Harold Wilson’s surprise resignation. I elicited this infelicity when I politely asked the passing chancellor what he thought would be his greatest problem if he was to win. “Eff off!” he said, and then he barked over his shoulder: “And that was on lobby terms!” I imagine now that his irritation was sparked by the knowledge that he had already lost the contest – he came fifth out of the six candidates in the first round but, anyway, at the time, I obeyed the rules.

I went to work at Westminster in 1971, on returning from the US, and the first MP I interviewed was the late Alf Morris. He repeated everything he said, sometimes more than once, and I couldn’t work out if he thought I was dim, or he didn’t trust my shorthand. It was a confusing initiation but things improved. I grew in confidence but I still went on making mistakes.

Pathetic pedant that I am, I told David Owen he would never get anywhere in politics if he continued to split the infinitive in his public speeches. That was, of course, before he became foreign secretary, left the Labour Party, founded the Social Democratic Party and eventually became its leader.

I was foolish enough to tangle with Enoch Powell. Hearing a rumour that he was standing down as an MP in Northern Ireland, I rang him at home and said that I understood that this was being suggested. He slammed down the phone. Trembling just a little, I rang again and he told me to stay away. Later in the same day, seeing him by then in the Commons chamber, I wrote him a letter in the internal mail in which I pointed out that, as a lobby correspondent, I was entitled to ask such a question and expect a civil reply, even if it was that he did not wish to comment. A few hours later, I received the response. It was written by hand, in ink and might even have been by quill pen. It was over two pages long and it was an essay on the use of the verb “to understand”.

Tangling with Clark – without joining the coven

I tangled with Alan Clark, too, often – but not like that. We used to have lunch often and he was very entertaining company. There were lots of laughs but never anything remotely improper, until the occasion when we were lunching at his suggestion and invitation in an Italian restaurant we favoured in a basement under New Scotland Yard. He booked and ordered the food, told me what I would eat and then, when the bill came, he pushed it across the table and said: “Maxwell will take care of this, won’t he.” It was not a question. I was political editor of the Daily Mirror at the time and took the bill and paid it. But I also wrote a weekly column in those days for the great Punch magazine and reported my exchange with Clark therein. “You shit!” he said, when I saw him next, but he bore me no animus.

He lacked vanity, unlike Robin Cook. I learned this after covering the Scottish Conservative conference one weekend where Cook was derogatively described from the rostrum as “yon wee Labour health pixie”, a description which was accurate, if unkind, but which I had also found more than a little amusing. Arriving at the Commons on the ensuing Monday morning, I found myself beside Labour’s then health spokesman. “Did you hear what someone called you in Perth?” I asked, chortling. He hadn’t. I told him. This proved a mistake, although illustrating an important aspect of the man’s character which, I suppose, was something the world needed to know.

I have made innumerable such errors in half a century at Westminster; too many by far to detail here. But there was one mistake I did not make: to follow the instruction of one of my editors in one particular instance. I had told her about the occasion I had been lunching with the former education secretary, Mark Carlisle. The minister was talking a lot – he was an excellent source – which had impeded him eating his food. I attempted to put him at his ease: “Don’t worry,” I said. “It is always said that men who eat slowly make better lovers.” I related this incident later to the editor, joking about how the poor man had purpled in embarrassment. She had quite other ideas. “I want you to take every man in the Cabinet out for a meal and time how long they take to eat it,” she said. “We will publish a league table.” I looked her in the eye and said of course, hoping – correctly, as it proved – that at least one of us would forget the conversation.