An Unexpected MP (16 page)

Politics in Northern Ireland has changed a great deal over the years – and very much for the better. The Ulster Unionists used to be the largest party and when I was in the NIO David Trimble had become their leader. I am very fond of David and
he eventually became an effective First Minister, but in the early days he was hard work and would be easily offended, particularly by Paddy Mayhew. When he became really angry a vein used to throb on his left temple, which is how officials gave him the nickname Penis Head.

Paddy was always good news. Tall, patrician and a very effective Secretary of State. Our Permanent Secretary was John Chilcot, later chairman of the Iraq War inquiry.

One evening I received a call from Paddy on the day that Jacques Delors was due to pay a visit to Hillsborough Castle for a reception.

‘Bloody Delors has got the flu, come and help me with the food.’

So Ratkins, Paddy and I spent the evening at Hillsborough, sitting on the floor of the Throne Room watching the telly and hoovering up all those wasted canapés and a few bottles of wine.

The video link, quite a modern innovation in those days, kept us all in touch. If in London, we would go into a leaky basement and chat on what we hoped was a secure link. After all, we remembered Richard Needham as a junior minister a few years earlier mentioning on his mobile that he was having to entertain the ‘old cow’ the next day. The IRA monitored all mobile phone traffic and released the tape. And the ‘old cow’ in question was Margaret Thatcher, who was decidedly frosty when Needham escorted her round Belfast town centre.

One day, on the link, Paddy made an announcement. ‘Gentlemen, we have been less than honest with you recently, but for good reason. We have received a message from the Provisional IRA that they want to end the war.’

This was the beginning of the peace process.

Relations with the Irish were friendly but fraught. One of the difficulties was that every now and again there would be suspicions that we were leading them up the garden path, usually over something that had been said by John Hume.

John is a very great man, the leader of the civil rights
movement
and a hardworking and decent bloke who did more than many to secure peace in the North. But he could be a little erratic after a drink. He would tell a journalist that there was about to be some breakthrough and then perhaps mention it to one of his mates in the Irish government. John would then disappear for a few days and none of us knew where the hell he was. So the Irish would ask us what the great breakthrough was and we would tell them the truth. We didn’t know. He hadn’t told us. And no, we hadn’t a clue where he was. They often didn’t believe a word of it. But we muddled through in the end.

But the Irish were always great fun to deal with, although sometimes a little quirky. Poor old Paddy was totally
exasperated
by one Irish Foreign Minister who had agreed to keep silent about some recent progress and then went out to give a press conference on it. When asked why the agreement was broken, the minister looked rather confused. ‘Sometimes when you need to be silent you have to say something.’ Mmm.

And in the Province the politicians can be delightfully dopey too. I once had to trek up country to a remote village to listen to the chairman of a local authority make a speech which he had clearly not bothered to read before delivery as he ended with, ‘And Mr Chairman should you have any
questions
about the content of this speech please contact me on…’ Wonderful.

There was a time when I was a member of the Anglo-Irish parliamentary body. Now that was serious fun. You have to remember that the Irish government is designed to get you drunk and then sober you up. We would land, be tanked up in the VIP lounge, go for a reception and then have dinner up at the Castle with the President. The next morning would be a plenary session. Then at 11.30 a.m. we would troop off to the bar, laden with bucket-sized Bloody Marys. And the first question they would always ask me was never about politics, but what was James Whale really like. But those drinkathons were useful in that we formed good friendships, and with that comes trust.

There was a time when Ireland always used to keep winning the Eurovision Song Contest, which they hated as they had to stump up the cost of the next one. In the early hours of the morning I was drinking with a crowd in some grand Dublin hotel. Suddenly some unshaven guy reeking of drink staggered over to us, recognised John Hume and plonked himself down. We thought he was a derelict who had just wandered in off the street. Anyhow, we bought him a drink. After a while we asked why he was in the hotel.

‘De Eurovision Saang Contest,’ he slurred in an
impenetrable
accent. We asked him how he got a ticket, to which he explained that he was representing Ireland. We raised our eyes heavenward in disbelief.

‘Come on, mate, you’ve had a drink, time to bugger off,’ said one of the lads. And off he went.

At the weekend I switched on the news. There was the derelict, greatly smartened up. The winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.

I was really enjoying the NIO. Then one day I received a phone call from Ratkins.

‘Tim Yeo has just resigned. We’re off to the Department of the Environment.’

So, with a heavy heart we left the joy that was the Province and headed for a building in central London so ugly and so unfit for purpose that it should never have been built. These were the Marsham Street twin towers, which have now been mercifully razed to the ground. Each tower housed a separate empire: Transport and the DoE. And each department was within spitting distance of the other. This was appropriate as both were at war.

Poor old Tim Yeo had to resign as Minister of State for the Environment as he had been exposed by some grubby tabloid as having a ‘love child’ with some woman. Nowadays people would just shrug this off as an entirely private matter and unless it compromised his job he would have stayed in post. But these were the fetid days of ‘sleaze’, and an idiotic Tim Collins, a Downing Street spinner, had briefed that ‘Back to Basics’ was about morality rather than getting government stripped back to the basics that mattered.

So Ratkins and I arrived at the Department of the Environment expecting to be bored out of existence. We were not disappointed. But the views were wonderful. We didn’t need a clock in our office as we could see Big Ben so clearly. The scary bit was that in the morning you could see the clouds of polluted air sweeping into London, for which we were technically responsible.

The Secretary of State was John Gummer and our Permanent Secretary Richard Wilson, who went on to become Cabinet
Secretary. The parliamentary secretary was Sir Paul Beresford, whom Major had allowed to practise as a dentist at the same time as being a minister, which we all thought was rather odd. The joke was that apart from my chum Steve Norris, he was the only minister who pulled. Ratkins and Beresford did not get on terribly well, probably because Beresford was a dyed-
in-the
-wool Thatcherite and had run Wandsworth Council.

The Minister for Housing was my old mate David Curry. We live within a mile of each other and used to come back on the train together. One day when he was at Agriculture he told me that the worst part of his job was visiting abattoirs, which was ‘like descending into hell’. He was told at the last Major reshuffle by the Chief that he was to be promoted to Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture. Sure enough, the No. 10 switchboard rang, asking him to wait for a phone call from the Prime Minister. I bumped into him on the train recently and he told me that he is still waiting. Reshuffles tend to be chaotic affairs.

Gummer was a brilliant minister. He had this reputation for being pious simply because he believed in God, and was eventually brought into the Catholic Church by the splendid Michael Seed, a priest based in Westminster Cathedral. Seed also brought Tony Blair into the Catholic Church and told me that when he went to say Mass at No. 10 (for Cherie) he refused to put the communion water and wine on George W. Bush-personalised coasters. Michael is a great character. Once, we were having lunch at the Savile Club and he asked me when I’d last gone to Mass. I said I couldn’t remember.

‘What about confession, then?’

‘Blimey, thirty years.’

So he led me into the snooker room for confession. Probably a Savile first.

I have mentioned earlier that Gummer is great fun with an impish sense of humour. At our first morning
ministerial
meeting at the DoE, which, unlike other Secretaries of State, he refused to call ‘prayers’, he drew our attention to a report that the department had commissioned, at enormous public expense. The conclusion was delightfully barmy: ‘that the majority of people that fell out of windows did so because they were left open’. Ratkins and I looked at each other in utter amazement. ‘Jerry,’ said Gummer, ‘any view on this?’

‘Complete bollocks and an appalling waste of money.’

Gummer nodded and smiled.

‘Richard, could you ensure that this sort of nonsense never happens again?’ The Permanent Secretary agreed.

One day, the news that Tesco heiress Dame Shirley Porter was accused of moving Labour voters out of their
council
houses to ensure a Conservative victory was discussed. Gummer was very clear.

‘If these allegations are true they are appalling and just not Conservative. But I don’t want a single word of support for her, from anyone in this department. Nothing must jeopardise the inquiry.’

A few days later I received an invitation to attend an ‘at home’ with Shirley. I had never met her before or since, but as I had absolutely nothing to do with the inquiry I went just out of sheer curiosity. Not surprisingly, she was charm personified and showed me her portrait in full Lord Mayor of Westminster regalia. In the corner of the picture was a shop sign that she had specially commissioned. She was very proud
of it. It said ‘fuck off’. All in the best possible taste. Years later she was fined £30 million by the district auditor.

You would have thought that as ministries are staffed by politicians, policy decisions would be very political. Well, not at the DoE.

The amazing thing about the DoE was how apolitical it was. Everyone really wanted to make a difference without scoring too many party points. One day, we were discussing what to do with £30 million worth of grants. I suggested that we look at the best projects and if two were of the same value we’d give it to a Tory marginal. There was a sharp intake of breath.

‘That is far too political.’

And that wasn’t from officials. It wasn’t from Ratkins, either.

Gummer was very politically canny. He had done deals with Alan Beith, offering support for his Bill on saving energy. He had given his word. Then, the Treasury had a change of heart and we found ourselves in a bit of a mess. There was a way round it if a few clauses were redrafted. Richard Wilson told us that there weren’t enough parliamentary draftsmen to amend it in time for Friday. Gummer made it quite clear that he wasn’t going to be hung out to dry on this and that as Permanent Secretary Richard would have to find one. This is always the problem in government: it is rarely joined up.

We were tasked to come up with a housing policy that cost nothing. So we spent an away day at David Curry’s home trying to sort something out. A well-meaning total waste of time, because every good idea we had cost money and the Treasury would be certain to block it. When I spoke to David the other day I reminded him of this and asked him what eventually our housing policy was in 1997. He looked at me
blankly and then both of us laughed. We hadn’t got a clue, and we had written it.

Then the sad day came when Ratkins invited me out to dinner to break the news that he was leaving government to nurse his marginal seat. As we had such fun together I saw no point in staying on at Environment, so we both left together.

But then another opportunity came along which would change my life:
The James Whale Show
.

O
ne day, a badge messenger (the guys in white tie who search you out) handed me a green slip with ‘Please ring Mike Mansfield’. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure who he was, but assumed it was the well-known criminal barrister. Well, it wasn’t. It was a delightfully camp television director whose claim to fame was
Cue the Music
. He was the guy who at the beginning of every programme would have a close-up of himself giving the imperial television order, ‘Cue the music, darling.’

Mike had a TV project involving radio legend James Whale. Was I interested and if so could we have a chat? Of course.

So I rolled up to his offices. The project was a very wacky weekly television show for a youth audience late on a Friday night. Would I consider doing a regular political slot which would involve James asking me some light-hearted questions about the political issues of the day? Why not?

So I found myself one Tuesday evening in a tiny studio just off Carnaby Street for the first recording. By the magic of television, everyone thought it was live, but we recorded two shows on a Tuesday back-to-back every fortnight. I was on with solicitor Gary Jacobs,
Daily Mail
showbiz columnist Baz Bamigboye and an attractive black lady who was always
dressed in the scantiest of clothes, called Cookie. She was a model who traded off some very large assets. We were to be the regulars and the show would be nationally networked for ITV by London Weekend Television at midnight every Friday. It became an immediate hit, pulling in about three million viewers a week, and now it is regarded as a cult show. Even today, twenty years after it came off air, I am still recognised on the street by catering staff, drunks and druggies. In fact, it was aimed at students and those who had just arrived home bombed out of their brains. They loved it.

A year or so ago a black-cab driver took one look at me and said,

‘’Ere, you’re that Jerry Hayes, aren’t you? Answer me just one question. Did you ever shag that black bird, Cookie?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Well, you’re more of a twat than I thought you were. Where do you want to go, guv?’

And then there was that very weird experience standing outside El Vino in Fleet Street late at night, waiting for a number 23 bus. After a long wait one appeared. The doors opened and the driver yelled, ‘James Whaaaale! Hop on, Jerry, where are you going, mate?’

I thought this was all a little strange as, after all, this was a bus. But nevertheless I told him I was trying to get to Liverpool Street. And off we went, swerving around corners and not stopping for anybody. Then I noticed some other odd goings-on. There were no other passengers. The lights weren’t on and there was a very strong whiff of alcohol. It was only when we finally screeched to a stop outside the station and the driver fell out of his seat that it finally dawned on me that he
had nicked the bus. I made my excuses and got off as quickly as possible.

James Whale had the reputation of being a hard-nosed and thoroughly objectionable sod. But that was his media persona. The truth is he is a bit of a pussycat but, like everybody else, can’t stand it when people in authority seem incapable of
telling
the truth. So he would give them a hard time.

At first we couldn’t quite get the measure of each other. I was waiting for the killer below-the-belt question, he for the slimy political evasions. When neither happened we relaxed and became good friends.

I would be dressed in what would be now called skinny jeans, with a waistcoat made by one of Tom Gilbey’s students. The waistcoat would be wackier by the week. But the show was done on the cheap. I and the other regulars were paid the princely sum of £50 a show. But nobody cared as the publicity was amazing and it was a fantastic buzz to be part of
groundbreaking
TV. Nowadays television executives would never allow a show to go on air in the manner we did. There was no script and no rehearsal. We knew the structure of the show in so far as who would be coming on, but that was it. One guest was Hollywood legend Neil Sedaka, who loved the
spontaneity
. As did Kiki Dee, Simon Le Bon and many others. We had some great guests because everyone wanted to appear.

One of things I would do before we started was warm up the audience. The trouble was we didn’t always have one, so runners, sometimes accompanied by me, would do a dash round the pubs and drag people in. And we pulled in some pretty strange characters, some of whom were sober. One night, I noticed a young lad sitting in the audience dressed
solely in latex. I haven’t a clue where they’d found him. I thought it best not to ask. On another occasion, a leather-clad woman came in off the streets with a remarkable contraption full of zips, leggings, rubber and electric wiring. She explained that this was a simulated sex machine. Would I care to try it on? She would plug it in for me. As I wasn’t entirely sure where it would be plugged in, I politely declined.

But it is a really good idea if you are doing a show as live to warm the audience up yourself. It gives you a rapport and pointers as to what will make them react when the cameras roll.

James was notorious for playing tricks on me. We had been interviewing some fellow who had written a book about the wonders of urine. Great for your health, your complexion and, if you drank it, your gums. Although it probably wasn’t so good for your breath. The idea was that at the end of it all James and I would toast each other with the stuff, have a long slurp and grin at the camera. Of course, it would be cider. Just before my slurp I noticed that James’s glass had a tiny black dot at the bottom. Alarm bells rang. I had been given a glass of the real McCoy. No way was I going to put that to my lips. And thoughts of a
Sun
headline – ‘Tory MP takes the piss’ – flashed before my eyes. So Whaley and I had a mock fight.

Not as bad as the bit of fun I had with a former
Blue Peter
presenter, the lovely Michaela Strachan. It was one of those daft evenings where the dream girls were playing strip poker with the dream boys and we had about thirty seconds to kill before the end of the show. The floor manager whispered, ‘Do something.’ So, with great presence of mind, I picked up a whip (as you do) and chased a giggling Michaela around the studio, giving her the odd swish. I thought nothing of it until
I read the tabloid headline afterwards: ‘Tory MP spanks
Blue Peter
presenter’. Actually, it was all rather innocent.

I once got into trouble for an off-the-cuff remark that I made while filling some time with a black cat on a fishing line. It was a skit on the then famous ‘astrologer’ Mystic Meg. I called it Mystic Mog. And in a moment of devilment I grinned at Cookie and leered, ‘Well, we like a bit of black pussy, don’t we?’ She gave me a playful slap and that was it. LWT were not amused. Three (!) people had complained about my ‘racist’ remark. Of course, nothing happened.

On one occasion Adrian (AA) Gill of the
Sunday Times
wanted to see a recording and do a profile of me. I implored James to behave, but it’s like waving a red flag at a bull or saying to Eric Joyce MP, ‘You don’t want a drink, do you?’ It becomes a challenge.

All was going rather well until we came to the bit where there was a scene involving a set of stocks. I was to put my head in, then quickly jump away, and a poor member of the audience would be locked in while we all threw gunge at them. Well, you can guess what happened. As soon as my head was in, James clicked the lock shut. And a custard pie came flying in my direction. Gill couldn’t believe his luck. He stitched me up like a kipper the next Sunday, complete with a video grab of me being custard-pied. To be honest, I could hardly blame him; if our roles had been reversed I would have done exactly the same thing.

Then one Tuesday I noticed that some beauty from
Baywatch
was on. I was handed a pair of Speedos and was told that she was going to rescue me from drowning in a nearby swimming pool and we’d all pretend to do it in slow motion. The trouble
was it was then midwinter, with the snow still on the ground. So I was chucked in the pool, dragged out, and laid by the side of the road while this woman with child-bearing lips and implants that could raise the
Costa Concordia
proceeded to attempt mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This caused great amusement to the straggle of drunks and druggies who had gathered, wondering what on earth was going on. It took three takes. God, it was cold. Which is probably just as well.

It is difficult to decide who the most bizarre guests were. There was a fellow who would bounce up and down dressed as a penis, who called himself Knobby the Knob. Or some guy who had twenty-two piercings in his todger, whom James had to interview. This caused a dilemma, as he could hardly whip the thing out on camera. Luckily, the guy was wearing a kilt. So James just shoved a microphone underneath and asked him to jump up and down. It sounded like a seedy and eerily perverted ‘Jingle Bells’. But it was great television.

Then there was a couple who claimed to be turned on by the smell of baking bread. That interview was done in bed, with every bloomer/French stick pun imaginable. And then there was a very disturbing group of men who got their kicks by being dressed as babies; worse, wanted to be treated like them. Creepy.

The only time that I really came unstuck was when we were meant to be chatting with the Vice-President of Iceland. I had just had to leave for a vote, which was always a treat for my parliamentary colleagues, as I would be trooping through the lobbies in full TV make-up and a weird waistcoat. Although where the myth came from that I was once dressed as a French maid still perplexes me. This was mischievously raised
in the chamber by Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who, on a point of order, said that she couldn’t take anything seriously from a man who appeared on the TV dressed as a French maid. Madam Speaker came to the rescue by saying that with my golden curls (the
Telegraph
used to refer to me as the golden golly) she was sure that I would look very pretty in the outfit.

After the vote, I came back to the studio without having had time to read the notes. So I complimented the blonde and beautiful Vice-President of Iceland, whom James was interviewing, on her English. She looked perplexed. Then the penny dropped.

‘Not the country, the frozen food company,’ she sweetly smiled.

After each show we would pop into a lovely Italian
restaurant
just off St Martin’s Lane called Giovanni’s. The owner, a great guy called Pino, used to keep the place open for us until the early hours so we could let off steam. And more often than not, after a few bottles of Sicilian red wine we would take down a couple of unwieldy ceremonial swords from the wall and have mock fights, usually with actors who had just finished their shows and were in need of a little light relief.

On one show we had a few guys from Madame JoJo’s dressed as very pretty girls. At the end, one of them said that as he had never been to the Commons would I give him a tour? My pleasure. So, on the appointed day I searched the central lobby for him. No luck. But there in the corner was a tranny in full rig. It was him. I had foolishly assumed that he would come as a bloke. He really was a very charming fellow, but some of the old buffers were not impressed.

The only celebrity that I have taken to the Commons who
literally stopped the traffic was Frank Bruno. We had become friends as we both supported the same charity in Harlow for mentally handicapped kids. He always came to the Christmas party and was fantastic with the children, who adored him.

I suggested lunch at the Commons.

I met him at Westminster station and walked him across the road. Cars, buses, lorries and vans ground to a halt and scores of people abandoned their vehicles just to shake him by the hand. And when we got to the Commons and word got round, he was surrounded by well-wishers. And he was charming to everyone. I have never seen anyone, not even Margaret Thatcher, have the same effect on so many people. He made everyone feel good about themselves.

Poor Frank has had a very rough time in the last few years and he has behaved with great dignity. He really is genuinely loved by the public. And rightly so.

When it was suggested that we take the
Whale Show
on the road, I thought that it might be quite good fun, so I agreed. And as the money was considerably more than the fifty quid that I was paid for each TV show it was a bonus. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, just about everything. The venues were to be Butlins holiday camps in the winter, where
punters
could pay £25 for the weekend. They were not the most sophisticated of audiences and in those days Butlins wasn’t the upmarket (ish) chain that it is now. The first venue was a nightmare, the last a catastrophe.

So we flew up to Ayr in Scotland. God, it was grim. The 3,000-strong audience were all out of their brains, as we were booked in at happy hour where trebles were sold for the price of singles. And the punters – you would have put straw
down in their bedrooms and given them their tea in a trough garnished with a dead dog. It made the Glasgow Empire, that graveyard for performers, seem like the Royal Opera House. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Bernard Manning had been on a couple of hours before. All in the best possible taste, of course.

‘Reet. Are there any black lads in the audience?’ And the spotlight eventually rested some poor young man.

‘Come on up here, son.’ Which, rather nervously but
fortified
with a keg of lager, he did.

‘Put the spotlight on him. Good, now I can see you. Right, son, we are now going to have a public hanging.’

And who said that family entertainment was dead?

Well, Manning went down well but the next act was a gay panto. This, of course, was as welcome as a cup of cold sick. I was sharing a dressing room with the strippers and we could hear the shouting and swearing of the angry mob as the cast were hooked off the stage. Some sprog at the
News of the World
later got wind of this and asked me, with a salacious leer, what had happened. No doubt he expected me to say that I made my excuses and left. My quote was that we spent an enjoyable time discussing the tracts of Wittgenstein. And he printed it.