Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings (32 page)

‘That was sporting of him,’ replies Kingsley. ‘Anyway, you should have taken the Hitch into the bedroom with you.’

‘Maybe. And maybe not.’

Reflecting on the incident later, Kingsley Amis wonders whether exhaustion from chasing his son around the bed might have hastened Driberg’s demise.

‘The idea does not displease me much,’ he adds.

TRADES ABUSE WITH

Baruch College, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York

September 14th 2005

Nearly thirty years on, Christopher Hitchens is living in America. A celebrated iconoclast, contrarian and master of what Auberon Waugh termed the vituperative arts, he is a vociferous supporter of the allied invasion of Iraq. For all these reasons, he holds the radical politician George Galloway in particular contempt.

There is no one more radical than Galloway. A throwback to an earlier, more revolutionary era, he has been expelled from the Labour Party for bringing it into disrepute, and now heads his own party, ‘Respect’, or ‘Respect (The George Galloway Party)’, as he calls it on the ballot papers. Like Hitchens, he stalwartly refuses to hide his light under a bushel.

The two men have much else in common: a passion for smoking (cigarettes for Hitchens, cigars for Galloway), a roguish theatricality, an instinctive command of rhetoric, a simple delight in their own capacity for holding the strongest opinions. Only a few years ago, Galloway viewed Hitchens as a comrade, praising him as ‘that great British man of letters’ and ‘the greatest polemicist’. But things have soured. Now Galloway includes him in his list of the damned. ‘The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time,’ he says.
¹⁴³

The two men met for the first time on the steps of the Senate building in Washington a few months ago, as Galloway prepared to defend himself before a Senate committee against its allegation that he had traded in oil.
With television cameras whirring, Hitchens approached him and questioned a few of his claims.

GALLOWAY
: This is a bloated, drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay, who is just walking around as a sort of bag lady in Washington.

HITCHENS
: Just enquiring ... I just wondered. You said you’d contacted the committee by letter, by email. Did you bring copies of the letters with you?

GALLOWAY
: Has anyone got any sensible questions?

HITCHENS
: Or the email?

GALLOWAY
: You’re a drink-soaked, bloated –

AMERICAN REPORTER
: Are you going to answer his question? The substance of his question?

GALLOWAY
: I’m here to talk to the Senate.

Hitchens followed him inside the building, and continued to barrack him with questions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘a fresh hose of abuse was turned on me’.

GALLOWAY
: Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink.

HITCHENS
: And you’re a real thug, aren’t you?

Soon afterwards, Galloway accepts Hitchens’ invitation to a public debate. Meanwhile, Hitchens accelerates his personal attacks. ‘Study the photographs of Galloway from Syrian state television and you will see how unwise and incautious it is for such a hideous person to resort to personal remarks,’ he writes in one of his many columns. ‘Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs.’
¹⁴⁴

Hitchens announces the ground rules for their forthcoming
confrontation. ‘There’ll be no courtesies and no handshakes.’ On the evening of their debate on the motion ‘The March 2003 war in Iraq was necessary and just’, Hitchens stands outside Baruch College distributing leaflets listing some of his opponent’s more outlandish remarks, among them his greeting to Saddam Hussein in 1994: ‘
Your Excellency, Mr President
...
I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.
’

Galloway remains undeterred. Aptly, he picks an analogy from the world of heavyweight boxing. ‘He’s all washed up, like Sonny Liston,’ he says.

At their separate podia, Galloway, spruce, tanned and besuited, resembles a prosperous capitalist, while the bearded Hitchens, sweat stains inching along his purple shirt, his jacket tossed any-old-how to the floor, looks the very model of a modern rebel socialist. Over the next two hours, they exchange insults, with Iraq as the backdrop. Galloway attacks Hitchens for his ‘crazed shifts of opinion’ and asks, ‘How can anybody take you seriously?’

Hitchens congratulates Galloway on being ‘absolutely 100 per cent consistent in your support for unmentionable thugs and bastards’. Galloway calls Hitchens a hypocrite, ‘a jester at the court of the Bourbon Bushes’, and speaks of his voyage from left to right as ‘something unique in natural history ... the first metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug’. Hitchens counters by saying that Galloway’s ‘vile and cheap guttersnipe abuse is a disgrace ... beneath each gutter there’s another gutter gurgling away’. To which Galloway replies, ‘You’ve fallen out of the gutter into the sewer.’

And so it goes on. In the heat of the moment, both debaters grow intemperate. At one point, Hitchens praises the Bush administration’s handling of the flooding in New Orleans. ‘This is where it ends,’ retorts Galloway, ‘– you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans.’

In turn, Galloway appears to excuse the 9/11 terrorists. ‘Some believe that those aeroplanes on September 11 came out of a clear blue sky,’ he says. ‘I believe they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us.’

‘Mr Galloway,’ replies Hitchens, ‘you picked the wrong city to say that ... Our fault? No, this is masochism. And it is masochism being offered to you by sadists.’

America has grown used to its political elite wanting to be loved, or at least respected. It is fresh to the pleasures of mutual vituperation.

‘That is the end of my
pro bono
bit,’ Hitchens says at the end of his summing-up. ‘From now on, if you want to speak to me, you’ll need a receipt, and I’ll be selling books, because this is, after all, America.’ There is no vote taken, so no way to judge the winner. The opponents refuse to exchange another word: each stays in his own corner, busily signing copies of his latest book.
¹⁴⁵
The debate’s mediator also has a book to sign. After a tiring day, they stand united behind the cause of self-promotion.

FACES THE POPULAR VOTE AGAINST

Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire

January 23rd 2006

The Respect Party MP enters the television
Big Brother
house on January 5th. He is doing so, he maintains, because it is good for politics: ‘I believe that politicians should use every opportunity to communicate with people. I’m a great believer in the democratic process.’ As he enters the house, he shouts, ‘Stop the war!’

His fellow housemates are: Dennis Rodman, a retired American basketball player; Faria Alam, a former secretary at the Football Association, infamous for her kiss-and-tell affairs with the England football manager and the Football Association chief executive; Jodie Marsh, a former ‘glamour model’; Pete Burns, a transvestite singer with the group Dead or Alive; Preston, lead singer with the group the Ordinary Boys; Rula Lenska, an actress; Traci Bingham, the first black actress on
Baywatch
; Chantelle Houghton, a part-time Paris Hilton lookalike; Maggot, a Welsh rapper; and finally Michael Barrymore, the all-round family entertainer whose career nosedived five years ago, following the discovery of a corpse in his swimming pool.

Their first task is to line up in order of fame. In fact, Chantelle is not remotely famous, but has been secretly tasked with convincing the others that she is. Within the short time allotted, the housemates decide that Michael Barrymore is the most famous and Maggot the least. George Galloway comes fourth, between the
Baywatch
actress and the transvestite singer.

During the first few days, Galloway is chummy with Barrymore, and tells everyone he wants him to win. Barrymore is so moved by this unexpected show of support that he starts to cry. Galloway kisses him on the head. After a week, they have become firm friends, with Galloway defending Barrymore from an attack by Jodie Marsh,
who is upset that he has eaten her food. He calls Marsh ‘a wicked person’.
¹⁴⁶

Outside the
Big Brother
house, his fellow MPs criticise Galloway for neglecting his duties. He has, they argue, become a national laughing stock after going down on all fours and pretending to be a cat, then cavorting about in a red leotard.

Inside the house, his bonhomie is beginning to fray. He rounds on Chantelle and Preston for going into a secret room and eating luxury food denied to other housemates. ‘If I had been called in there I would have stood ramrod straight, refused to sit down, refused to eat, refused to drink, refused to smoke. I would have said, “You brought me here under duress, but I will refuse to partake in things that others are not allowed!”’

‘We were playing a game,’ replies Chantelle, reasonably. Galloway then attacks Preston: ‘You’re a sneak and a liar and you’re exposed to the world as a sneak and a liar ... We’ll see what the viewers thought of your double standards, your indignation about me and the aplomb with which you become a lying plutocrat in your gentleman’s club.’

He then turns his rhetoric on Barrymore for failing to support him when Big Brother removed his right to nominate people for eviction.

‘I was close to you, and Dennis was close to you and you stabbed both of us because of your mania about hoarding cigarettes ... Despite all the support I had given you, despite all the efforts I had made for you, when it came to a problem that I was facing, you were silent. You know why? Because you care about nobody except yourself. You’re the most selfish, self-obsessed person I have ever met in my entire life! ... You’re the only person you’ve talked about in here.’

At this point, Preston steps in.

PRESTON
: He’s talked about everyone non-stop!

GALLOWAY
: You haven’t even talked about your partner in here ...

PRESTON
: He’s talked about him non-stop! I can tell you everything he’s said about him! ...

GALLOWAY
: You’re self-obsessed!

BARRYMORE
: Oh, come on, George. George, you’re in this frame of mind because you’ve been nominated again, and you take it as a personal slight ... I’m an easy target ... You’re playing to the outside world.

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!

PRESTON
: Oh, don’t fucking bring that into it, that is low!

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!

BARRYMORE
: You are out of order ... you are out of order!

PRESTON
(
POINTING AT GALLOWAY
): You are a fucking wanker! You are fucking low!

BARRYMORE
: You are out of order!

PRESTON
: Wanker!

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me.

BARRYMORE
: And you’re doing it with a smile!

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me.

BARRYMORE
: You want to play around with an addict?

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me.

BARRYMORE
: Is that what you want to do?

GALLOWAY
: Poor me, poor me.

BARRYMORE
: That’s how caring you are, you care so much about everybody! ... George, I feel really sorry for you. You’re that sad, no wonder Tony Blair threw you out!

GALLOWAY
: Keep on talking, keep on talking.

BARRYMORE
: No wonder Blair threw you out.

GALLOWAY
: Keep on talking!

BARRYMORE
: You can do that smile, George, it don’t work, you need a bigger smile than that for the camera! ... You can do what you like to me, you can tear me down and rip me apart. But one thing you can’t have is my sobriety. When you’ve been to where I have been to, some of you may know what it’s like. Then stand up and have a go at me, until you reach that spot in your life, if ever you reach that spot in your life ... I beg you, please, to keep your opinions to yourself. And
I’ll do what I’ve done all the way through here and keep mine to myself.

(
LONG PAUSE
)

BARRYMORE
: Coffee, anyone?

The argument rages for twenty minutes. The next day, Galloway becomes the second housemate to be evicted from the house, with 65 per cent of the popular vote. The eventual winner is Chantelle Houghton. Barrymore comes second, emerging from the house to a chorus of cheers. But his career fails to revive; three years later he is spotted working part-time at a vehicle bodyworks business in Epping.

IS BEFRIENDED BY

Bayswater, London W2

May 1996

The chief psychiatrist at the Marchwood Priory mental-health hospital looks over his half-moon glasses. ‘I have something for you which I think may cheer you up,’ he says to his patient, Michael Barrymore. He is holding a letter from someone his patient has never met.

My dearest Michael
,

I was so sad to hear that once again you had had to be re-admitted to The Priory ... You have given so much happiness and pleasure to me and my family over the years, as you have millions of others. The least we can do is to be there for you when you need all the love and care you can get.