Breaking the Code (3 page)

David Owen hogs the headlines: ‘Decade of hope ends in humiliation … Owen’s odyssey from giddy heights to political failure … Owen – the great might-have-been.’ SDP RIP. What does David Sainsbury
41
do with his money now?

Up on the Wirral we have a good day. It’s the opening of the Inner City Village Hall. HRH is very mellow. The only problem is the weather. As we await the royal arrival, the wind blows and the hapless ladies in the line-up battle to keep their hats on and their skirts down. Inevitably, as it lands, Prince Philip’s helicopter makes matters worse and most of the bobbing up and down, the curtseying and the handshaking, is done with left hands on head and skirts bunched and held steady between knocked-knees.

The failure of Royal Britain is the lead story in the
Mail on Sunday
financial section:

The truth is the idea was okay, but the product wasn’t quite right, the initial management wasn’t quite right, the marketing was off-target and the location was a disaster. Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.

On Friday I was at the Connaught Rooms for the Unicorn Heritage Creditors Meeting – a humiliation and a nightmare. On Saturday I was back at the Connaught Rooms presiding over the National Scrabble Championship Finals! I am described on the front page of today’s
Times
as ‘the high priest of trivia’. Michèle says, ‘If your claim to fame is that you founded the Scrabble Championships and you go on wearing those silly jumpers, what do you expect? People will take you not for what you are, but for what they see. That’s life.’ Bah.

Long letter from Windsor Castle. HRH has been brooding about the Inner City Village Hall:

We go to Wimbledon, the royal box. It’s a treat and lovely to be asked etc., but we mustn’t accept again. The lunch is jolly (ish), but the tennis is wasted on me. I have not the least idea what is going on.

The hottest day of the year finds us filming in the glorious garden of Hadspen House. Tomorrow, Stourton. Sunday, Stourhead. Also feeling the heat is Nicholas Ridley
42
who looks set to be booted out of the Cabinet having given an interview to
The Spectator
in which he declares that Germany is trying to take over Europe…

As the world prepares for war, the Brandreths prepare for Italy. President Bush is planning a lightning strike against Iraq as Saddam Hussein rounds up Americans, Britons,
French and Germans in Kuwait. In Barnes we pack our bags because tomorrow we’re off on a lightning trip of our own – to Verona in Colin and Rosie Sanders’ private jet. It’s all right for some … It’s all right for
us
. This is typical of Colin: after the Royal Britain collapse he called and said, ‘You need cheering up. Let’s go to the opera.’ And so we are.

The Arena di Verona is amazing: a vast, outdoor amphitheatre, the third largest in the Roman world, seating 20,000 and more. Since AD 30 it’s seen Christians thrown to the lions, gladiatorial combat, bullfights, public executions, but tonight, for us, it was
Tosca
. We sat in the best seats in the house (of course), slim flutes of champagne in hand (naturally), surrounded by exhausted victims of corporate hospitality. Next to us, bewildered Japanese; immediately in front, a group who had started the day in Ohio and were fast asleep (all eight of them) way before the end of Act One. Even better than the show (a Philistine speaks!) was the post-Puccini supper – a late-night cold collation back at the hotel:
antipasto di frutti di mare
, wafer-thin
carpaccio
with rocket salad and parmesan, washed down with buckets of chilled Prosecco. As a rule I subscribe to the Noel Coward line that ‘work is more fun than fun’, but once in a while the soft life can be very sweet.

Wednesday night was sensational: the show rivalled the midnight feast! It was
Zorba the Greek
. At first, Colin was disconcerted to find it was a ballet, not an opera, but it was
so
fantastic, and such a surprise, such an unexpected treat, we were all bowled over. Essentially it was the ballet of the movie, with the Mikis Theodorakis score and Mikis in person on the podium! It was a life-enhancing triumph, my best ever night at the opera.

Yesterday was pretty good too. We flew to Venice for lunch. Colin hadn’t realised it was only down the road, so we’d hardly taken off before we landed. And in the evening we were back at the Arena for the Verona standard,
Aida
, through most of which Colin kept muttering ‘Where are the elephants? Where are the elephants? It isn’t a proper
Aida
without elephants.’

At the airport this morning it’s back to reality. We buy newspapers (‘Angry Bush takes a step closer to war’, ‘40,000 reserve forces called up by US’) and, now we’ve been part of it for seventy-two hours, notice that the private-jet-set get a tangibly mixed reception. We’re whisked past the bucket-shop
hoi polloi
, to be sure, but our passage through customs and passport control isn’t so smooth: there’s a fair bit of that
just-because-you’re-filthy-rich-don’t-think-you’re-getting-any-special-treatment-from-me atmosphere in the air.

This may be the day that changes my life. I hope so.

As far back as I can remember I have wanted to be a Member of Parliament. At Betteshanger, in 1959, I was the Liberal candidate (age eleven). At Bedales, in 1964, I came out for Sir Alec.
43
In 1970, the election that brought Ted Heath to power was held on the last day of my Finals.
44
I took the train to London to vote, went back to Oxford to party, and returned to London again to be on call overnight at Television Centre as the ‘Conservative Voice of Youth’ (!), alongside Jack Straw
45
for Labour. In the mid ’70s I toyed with getting myself onto the candidates list (but didn’t follow it through) and I’ve kept in touch (sort of) with Oxford contemporaries who are in there now, but until this year, this summer really, these past few weeks, I haven’t sensed that I was going to go for it, to make it happen. Well, now I am.

It’s really rather funny to be forty-two, to be aspiring to be a Member of Parliament, and to have not the least idea how to set about it. I probably appear as cocky and confident as they come: in truth, I’m as diffident and as uncertain as all get-out. Anyway, the point is: this morning I took my courage in my hands and called Jeffrey Archer.
46
I began dialling (only Jeffrey’s number could contain the digits 007) and then – suddenly – lost my nerve and hung up. I sat looking at the telephone, staring at it stupidly, and then, saying to myself, out loud, ‘Don’t be such an idiot, pull yourself together man’, I picked up the receiver and dialled again. Jeffrey was there, and easy and helpful and
kind
.

‘Yes,’ he barked, ‘It’s about time. As I said to your mother, “If only he’d got on with it when I first told him to, he’d be in the Cabinet by now.”’

I don’t know quite how or where or when Jeffrey can have met my mother, but never
mind. He explained that I’ll only get a seat if I’m on the official candidates’ list (which I knew) and that the man I need to see (which I didn’t know) is one Tom Arnold, son of the impresario, MP for Hazel Grove
47
and vice-chairman of the party in charge of candidates.

I call Central Office right away. Tom Arnold isn’t there. I speak to a terrifying young woman with a triple-barrelled surname and marshmallows in her mouth. I don’t say who I am or why I’m calling – I mutter, ‘It’s not urgent, I’ll call back’ and hang up. But this afternoon (having discovered from
Who’s Who
that Tom Arnold also went to Bedales!) I write to him, saying here I am, this is who I am, and can I come and see you? So the deed is done.

A letter arrives from Mrs Camilla Barnett Legh, Candidates Department, Conservative Central Office: ‘Sir Thomas Arnold has asked me to thank you for your letter of 30 August. Perhaps you would be good enough to telephone this office in order to make an appointment to see Sir Thomas at your convenience.’ We’re on our way! … Or so I think until I telephone Mrs Barnett Legh who tells me (from a great height) that the earliest, ‘absolutely the earliest’, Sir Thomas can fit me in is Monday 5 November at 3.20 p.m. An appointment two months down the road at twenty past the hour does not suggest an
urgent
desire to see me nor the prospect of an extended interview, but what can I do? Be grateful I suppose – and hope the election isn’t called meanwhile.

I still haven’t told Michèle what I’m up to.

Mrs T. is on
Frost
saying she expects to be around for a good few years yet, certainly till she’s seventy. ‘Some people
started
their administrations at seventy.’ She’s ridiculous, but wonderful.

The news is not good. The World Health Organization is predicting that thirty million
people will have Aids by the year 2000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
48
is forecasting ‘the most difficult few months of the cycle’. And Michèle is saying, ‘The recession is coming. We’ve got to batten down the hatches.’

Hot news: Britain is to join the European exchange rate mechanism on Monday when interest rates will be cut by 1 per cent to 14 per cent. Everyone agrees it’s a brilliant move: Major, Hurd,
49
Kinnock, the Bank of England and the TUC. Nigel Lawson
50
is euphoric: ‘I warmly welcome this historic decision which I have long advocated.’ Mrs T. is giving a press conference outside No. 10. ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’ Naturally there’s heated speculation about ‘a dash to the polls’ – and I haven’t even had my frigging first interview yet!

Jill Bennett
51
has died. I last saw her not long ago, very drunk at the Caprice. We embraced like long-lost lovers, but she hadn’t a clue who I was. I doubt any of the obituaries will feature one of my favourite filthy Coral Browne
52
stories. As a girl Jill had had a passionate affair with a much older actor, Godfrey Tearle I think. Said Coral, ‘I never could understand what Godfrey Tearle got out of his relationship with Jill Bennett – until one night I saw her eating corn-on-the-cob at the Caprice.’

These charity lunches are quite a burden. Making it happen, making it work, making it all seem effortless. Anyway, I put Joanna [Lumley] next to HRH at lunch today and it solved everything. She’s perfect and he’s charming and they looked as if they were actually having quite a jolly time. Small talk with royalty isn’t easy. Being normal with royalty is impossible.

There’s that great line of Joyce Grenfell’s mother: ‘When royalty leaves the room, it’s like getting a seed out of your tooth.’

The Lib Dems have won Eastbourne with a 20 per cent swing from the Tories, Howe
53
and Major are at loggerheads, the rift on monetary union is rocking the party, and this is the moment I choose to enter the fray! Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe I’m right not to have told Michèle. Maybe my destiny is to be the high priest of trivia. Today I had sessions on
Puzzle World
, the Butlin’s project, and the
TV Joke Book
. Tomorrow I’m in Stratford leading the Pudsey Bear Parade. And on Monday I’m at Merchant Taylor’s Hall hosting ‘The Barbie Summit’. Apparently, I’ll get to meet the original Ken and Barbie – ‘in person’.

So this is it…

‘Gyles Brandreth – who was he?’

‘Oh, you know – the poor man’s Jeremy Beadle.’

Geoffrey Howe has resigned in protest over Mrs T.’s attitude to Europe. ‘I can no longer serve your government with honour.’ There’s a wonderful picture in
The Times
of the Thatcher Cabinet in 1979. Eleven years later and there’s not one of them left. She’s eaten every single one … By way of tribute at the Caprice at lunch I chose
steak tartare
and was delighted Colin Moynihan hadn’t cried off. He’s fun, puck-like, and friendly. He seemed very sanguine about Mrs T.’s own prospects – rather less so about his own. He’s got a majority of 5,000 but on current form reckons that won’t be enough. I didn’t ask him about Tom Arnold. I’m not sure why. I think it’s partly awkwardness, shyness even, partly self-protection. If I don’t tell anyone I’ve put up for something, if I don’t get it nobody knows and I can pretend (even to myself) it never happened.

‘Thatcher moves to fight off Heseltine
54
threat’ was today’s headline. This I did not discuss this afternoon when I had my brief encounter with Sir Thomas Arnold MP. I reached
St James’ station at three o’clock and contrived a roundabout route (via Victoria Station!) so that I walked into 32 Smith Square on the dot of 3.15. I was expected. A girl emerged, easy, friendly, and ushered me past a mighty free-standing portrait of Mrs T. in all her glory towards a little side door that led to what felt very much like the back stairs. Up we went, round bends, along narrow corridors, on and on, until we reached the great man’s door. She knocked. A grunt, ‘Come!’ She opened the door and in I went. The office was tiny, more a vestibule than a room, and Sir Tom, my sort of age but looking older, sat behind his small, sparsely covered desk peering over half-moon specs and effortlessly exuding the discreet charm of the seasoned Tory MP. We exchanged pleasantries (it turned out he was only at Bedales for about ten minutes) and then I came to the point. Could I join the candidates list? Sir Tom was cordial but non-committal. Then he turned to gaze out of the window, narrowed his eyes a moment, touched his mouth with a finger and said, as if thinking out loud, hardly above a whisper, ‘Officially, the list
is
closed. It’s all done and dusted. But … you never know.’ He turned back to the desk and flashed a crinkly smile. He opened a buff folder.