An Unexpected MP (6 page)

I know this book is not meant to be terribly serious, but being a Member of Parliament exposes you to the realisation that the British are a kind, generous and tolerant people. It also makes you understand that so many find themselves in dire and tragic circumstances and bear it with great courage. To try to help them is a privilege far more precious than any office of state.

One of the things an MP has to do is keep their finger on the pulse of what is happening in the major public services. This means regular visits to hospitals, the fire service and the police. Policing in Harlow changed round about the 1990s. Before that, a couple of times a year I would have a great lunch with my divisional commander. These guys would be down-to-earth, practical and loved by their men. The meetings were incredibly valuable and I learned a lot about practical policing. Then, in the 1990s, it all changed. Rather than a few sharpeners in the office and then a cracking good lunch I was greeted by young men who were on the accelerated promotion scheme. Clever fellows, with good degrees, who had spent a few months on the beat then quickly got promoted to sergeant, then inspector, and then off to the office of the chief constable to think of wonderful wheezes to arrange his sock drawer and reorganise the paper clips. Ask for a drink and Satan had entered the room. From a few stiff whiskies and a couple of bottles of red to mineral water and sandwiches. Smooth PR guys with plastic smiles and an eye for the main chance. I was not there to be educated nor to bounce ideas off, but to assist in the next stepping stone of their ghastly careers. They didn’t want to discuss policing but policy. Ye gods.

However, there was one little ray of sunshine. One senior officer was having an affair with one of the girls in the finance department. They used to have passionate trysts in the glades of Epping Forest – until it hit the red tops. All caught on film and sound. How could this have happened? The officer forgot that he had approved a surveillance operation of some
very dodgy people … in Epping Forest. One sergeant who led the surveillance team said to me after the miscreant had retired over ill health, ‘I think the boys need counselling. It was enough to put you off tapioca and cocktail sausages for life.’

Harlow Council was a funny old set-up. It was outrageously left-wing when I was elected. Ken Livingstone would have been regarded as a bit of a Tory. Back in the day, they used to have late-night debates over the Vietnam War.

At first they regarded me as a terrible right-wing aberration (I think the Lady might have disagreed). My first story in the
Harlow Gazette
seriously upset the comrades. The mere fact that I had been mentioned almost favourably led the council to threaten their advertising revenues if I was ever mentioned again. The reporter, the lovely Ailsa Macintyre, whose fearless reporting I am indebted to, has now moved horribly
down-market
. She is now Ailsa Anderson, formerly the press secretary to the Queen and now press secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury. She is very good news.

Eventually, I rather warmed to the council. We eyed each other very suspiciously. They had never engaged with a Tory before. And then they found one who didn’t want to grind the faces of the poor into the dirt and who had a social conscience. It made them very, very confused.

The man I had to do business with was their general manager. Many councillors couldn’t understand why he had to talk to me at all. Actually, he was a really good guy and was at pains to explain to them that although I was a wicked Tory I would be willing to try and help them. His name was Dermot Byrne and his son is the well-known Labour politician Liam. Both are good blokes.

But I can understand why the local Labour Party viewed me with such suspicion. These people had come from the East End of London. The boss classes had ripped the heart out of them. The unions, and eventually Labour, had given them a voice and dignity. In those days the Tory politicians were a pretty grim bunch. In fact, my grandmother and most of her family were socialists. She was married to the welterweight world boxing champion, Jimmy Hicks. Sadly, he practised on her. As a working-class woman she went to the police many times to tell them about his brutality. They told her that’s what happens in marriage. It’s what a woman should expect. Bravely, she divorced him in 1905. Strange that so many years later they both ended up with dementia in the same hospital in adjoining beds. Neither had a clue who the other was. It was desperately sad. My grandmother was a very brave woman. To keep her family of seven in food and clothes she scrubbed the floors of an orphanage. It is now the Snaresbrook Crown Court. When I appear there I feel proud that my grandmother once cleaned those floors to keep my mother alive.

But enough of sentimentality, let’s get back to Harlow. I was amazingly lucky to have such great ground troops. Mind you, they were getting on a bit. But they were loyal and hardworking. In the run-up to the 1997 election, which I was doomed to lose, I had a phone call from the chairman of a safe seat. Would I like to stand? Of course I bloody would. But how could I look those who had worked so hard to get me elected in the eye again? For me it was a no-brainer. But the chicken run before the 1997 election, where sitting MPs jumped ship for safer berths, was a disgrace.

I know all MPs say this, but I am so grateful for those who worked so hard for me. Most hadn’t a penny to rub together.

During one election, I remember being chased down the road by some fellow who had my election address rolled up in his hand. He was threatening to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. ‘Not unless I get to you first,’ said I, on my charm offensive. A bit of a bundle ensued. Then he took a good look at me. ‘’Ere, you’re that Jerry Hayes.’

‘Yes,’ I gasped.

‘Sorry, mate, got you muddled with that Labour twat. Fifty quid all right?’

And it was. Harlow was a great place to represent.

And so, David and Betty Roberts, my loyal chairman and friends, and my last agent, Marion Little, thank you for your love and forbearance and for realising that I can be a bit of a handful. And for not telling too many people about it.

But how could I forget Rita Whyte? She was a great supporter who was the former deputy head of a primary school. She spent her life on the run from an abusive husband. Yet her son became an assistant chief constable and her daughter a chairman of a county council. So, when my party start having a go at single mothers I always take a deep breath and will never forget this remarkable woman. I was very proud to take her to a Buckingham Palace garden party before she died.

But the image that will stick in my mind more than any other is when Saddam Hussein visited Harlow. Well, sort of. In the middle of the first Iraq War, Harlow Council gave me a wonderful political present. The daft lefties refused to fly the Union flag over the town hall. When our boys were putting their lives at risk? Insane. So I contacted my mates
on the super soar-away
Sun
. I was told to meet a pleasant guy called Robert Jobson at the Harlow Moat House at 9 a.m. for breakfast the next day. So up I rolled to find the normally sleepy dining room packed. Must be some bloody convention. How was I supposed to find Robert? So I stood on a chair and asked if anyone was there from
The Sun
. Much hilarity. They
all
were.

The Sun
then invaded Harlow with two tanks, three Page Three lovelies and a Saddam Hussein lookalike. This was spread over three pages the next day, topped with a cartoon of Saddam on the balcony of Harlow Town Hall, doing a Nazi salute. Harlow Council was of course flying the Iraqi flag. Sadly, the lefties didn’t see the funny side of all this at all.

Being an MP is round after round of opening things. And I loved it. Harlow is infested with little plaques bearing my name. If you want to have look at a rather expensive brass one, pop in to the Beefeater Inn just outside North Weald. I was told there was going to be a parachute display and then a formal opening. So I peered into the sky and noticed a few little black dots. Then parachutes opened. But as they came nearer to earth they didn’t get an awful lot bigger. And they were all very round. When they landed I realised that Beefeater had parachuted in five dwarves dressed as Mr Men Beefeaters. They formed a guard of honour for me to open the place. The things one has to do.

Although I have always enjoyed swanning around being pleasant to people, you really need a great team to back you up.

My wife Alison was a top secretary before I poached her, and with her deputy, Jan, they kept the whole show on the road. It meant Ali could work from home and be there for our
two very small children. I had a reputation for dealing with problems quickly and efficiently, but the truth is it was really them. These sorts of partnerships are good for democracy, constituents and family life. But since the expenses scandal, employing any relative is regarded as a mortal sin. That is desperately sad.

L
ooking back on my days in the Commons is like reflecting on my childhood. All the days seemed to be sunny and the characters larger than life. But I am pretty sure that they were always far more interesting than today’s lot. Many of them are pretty vanilla.

Nick Soames is a case in point. Larger than life in every sense. I am not sure how much he weighs, but were he the Aga Khan, who balances himself against a tray of gold and diamonds every year (God knows why), he would be a very wealthy man. Being the grandson of Winston Churchill mercifully hasn’t given him airs and graces. It is also surprising that he is not some hang ’em and flog ’em man of the shires. He, like me, is very much a One Nation Tory (not in the ridiculous Miliband sense), which basically means that we are not obsessed with the certainty that the Germans will soon be jackbooting their way down the Mall and big fat sweating Belgians ordering that our railway timetables be translated into Walloon. In other words, we see the world and its
problems
pragmatically.

But Nick does have his delightful moments of innocence. In the 1980s in a BBC recording studio the sound man always
needed to have a ‘level’, so he would ask what we had had for breakfast and adjust the sound accordingly with our reply. One of Nick’s earliest broadcasts went like this.

‘For the level, Mr Soames, what did you have for breakfast, sir?’

‘Oh, some cold grouse and half a bottle of breakfast claret. What about you, old boy?’

Once, he came into the Smoking Room rather ashen-faced and sank a large gin and tonic.

‘I’m afraid I’ve done something quite unforgivable,’ he wailed.

He had just received a delegation of single mothers and had been rather sniffy about feckless women.

‘Feckless, Mr Soames? We are all Falklands widows.’ The poor fellow was utterly mortified.

He once told me his father’s advice on marriage: ‘Get your cock in the till, son.’

Not that either did. And, of course, no paragraph on Nick Soames could ever be complete without the words, which I am sure are apocryphal, of his first wife: ‘Having Nick make love to you is like having a wardrobe fall on top of you with the key still in.’

But my favourite story was when, as a young man, he went up to his grandfather asking if he was the most famous man in the world.

‘Yes. Now sod off.’

I know Nick can be a bit bombastic in the Toad of Toad Hall sense, but I have a soft spot for him because, beneath all the bluster, he is rather a sensitive soul.

Unlike some others. I suspect that John Prescott has a sensitive
side to him; it’s just that it is not very apparent if you are a Tory, since he thinks we really are lower than vermin. It was
probably
being a steward on the cruise liners and having to serve Anthony Eden and his ghastly braying entourage that gave Prescott his hatred not just for the policies but for the class. Although he did get his own back on a particularly patronising Eden by ‘accidentally’ spilling scalding-hot soup onto his crotch.

I often attempted to be jolly with him but never succeeded in breaking through the barrier. Once, we both appeared (in different studios) on the
Today
programme. I was being at my most irritatingly jovial and gave Prezza a few playful metaphorical jabs. I thought nothing of it until I bumped into him in the Members’ lobby later that day. With my legendary judgement and timing I thought this was the time to complete my charm offensive. So I bounced up to him with a grin.

‘Hi, John, that was a bit of fun this morning, wasn’t it?’

All I can remember is a jab in the solar plexus and a low primal growl. ‘You little Tory cunt.’

And then Labour Chief Whip Derek Foster grinning from ear to ear, saying, ‘Nice fellow, isn’t he?’ I’ve been boring friends with this story for years.

But Thumper once did come a cropper in the chamber.

It was a dozy, balmy afternoon, with a dreary debate so dull that nature has excised it from my memory. The Labour front bench, including Prescott, was fairly comatose, while David Blunkett’s guide dog was snoozing away. I can’t remember whether it was Sadie or Offa. It was probably the one that used to let off the sort of farts that could strip wallpaper and clear whole rooms. Devastating in a TV studio, where crew staggered for the exit like soldiers in the Great War after a
mustard gas attack. Anyhow, the dog had a very long lead that had entwined itself round the legs of the Labour front bench. Suddenly, a couple of well-refreshed Tory lads who had just staggered into the chamber thought it was time for a bit of sport. So they started staring into the eyes of the dog, growling and generally winding it up. In the end the poor mutt became so annoyed at having its afternoon nap disturbed that it got up and shook itself. Not good news for the Labour front bench entwined in the lead. They went down like ninepins. All very childish. But very, very funny.

Former Belfast MP Gerry Fitt was a tremendous character and enormously brave. He had been bombed out of his Belfast home and always returned. The final straw was when he fought off gunmen on the stairs. Thatcher, to her credit, made him a life peer and he returned to London.

Gerry was a prodigious drinker. He was rarely seen without an industrial-sized gin and tonic in his hand. When on the terrace he would wave to passing pleasure boats, raising his glass with the salute ‘It’s all free.’ Sadly, it wasn’t.

If he wasn’t on the terrace he could be seen with his
long-suffering
armed detective, chugging along the Thames in his little boat, gin and tonic in hand, entreating us to join him. The trouble is that Gerry tried to insist that his detective match him drink for drink. As the man was packing a weapon he politely declined, but agreed to join him drink for drink with tonic water. A few weeks later he was rushed to hospital. It took a while for the consultants to work out what was wrong. It was an unusual condition: quinine poisoning as a result of an overdose of tonic water. Well, at least he would never suffer from malaria.

Gerry was the father-in-law of broadcaster Vincent Hanna, who sadly died before him. I once appeared on his late-night TV show just before the end of the 1992 general election. It was an interesting panel: Ben Elton, Tim Rice, Austin Mitchell and me. Austin and I were so exhausted from campaigning that we spent the first five minutes on air fast asleep. We awoke to the horror of Vincent announcing to the viewers that his guests were going to sing a song. And we did. It was all very odd.

But not as odd as the week before, when I appeared on a popular yoof programme called
The Word,
which had become notorious for the outrageous antics of its presenter, Terry Christian. I suspect that I was asked because of an appearance months before on a dreadful little show when I’d become really exasperated by a ghastly presenter trying to make a name for himself by being rude to politicians. After about five minutes of cringe-making questions I’d finally been asked, ‘And what’s the worst sexual experience you’ve ever had?’

My reply, not exactly Tolstoy, shut the little creep up.

‘Your mother.’

The Word
thought that they would be very clever and set up me and controversial Tottenham MP Bernie Grant with a
Generation Game
conveyor belt with everyday items on it for us to price. There was no problem until it came to a packet of condoms. I hadn’t a clue. So I pleaded ignorance, saying that I only bought my condoms by the gross and with spikes on. That at least made the hooched-up teenage audience less likely to brain me.

But back to the big beasts. One of my first excursions into the Members’ dining room was a chance encounter with
the Reverend Ian Paisley. I saw him sitting on his own, so I thought I’d be polite, and plonked myself down. And being even more polite, I asked if he’d care to share a bottle of wine.

Not terribly bright. I learned that night that the DUP don’t approve of booze.

In his drinking days, the Press Association’s legendary Chris Moncrieff went to interview the big man. Clearly he smelt like a Guinness brewery. Paisley exploded, refusing to be interviewed by a man who had ‘the devil’s buttermilk on his breath’.

However, a few years later me and an Ulster Unionist MP decided to set the big man up. When dining together we provided him with a riddle, with the bet that in the unlikely event of him cracking it we would buy him the most expensive pudding on the Commons menu. Of course we set the riddle ridiculously easy so he couldn’t lose. The prize pudding duly arrived and the big man got stuck in. About five minutes into his pud, my chum, in fits of giggles, sniffed the air.

‘Ian, I can smell the devil’s buttermilk on your breath.’

Then I got a fit of the giggles. Then we had to explain that the pudding that he had won was actually laced with about three liqueurs.

We looked apprehensively at the big man, but the expected explosion never came. Just a chuckle and then a booming laugh. But he never finished his pudding. I once asked him if he would ever pray for me, as I was a Catholic.

‘Certainly. But not when you’re dead.’

With Paisley I got away with just a polite smile every time we met, despite the fact that I had enough devil’s buttermilk
in me to make a rather large Satanic cheese. He probably wouldn’t get on terribly well with Mike Burns, who was the larger-than-life political editor of Irish television, RTÉ. I am convinced that the man could walk on water (provided it was well diluted with Jameson’s Irish whiskey). Once, he found to his horror that the train taking MPs and the press back from a Blackpool Conservative Party conference had no buffet car. Journalists retired to the hotel bar in a state of shock. Mike just rang up the chairman of British Rail and it was sorted within the hour. Not even the Minister of Transport had the power to achieve that minor miracle.

Bruce Anderson (known as the Brute) is another big beast in every way. He really has become the Michelin man of the commentariat. He has put on so much weight of late, you worry that at any moment he is going to burst out of his clothes like the Incredible Hulk. The Brute gives the
impression
of being a right-wing bruiser but actually his views tend to be well informed and middle-of-the-road. He once wrote a piece about me in the
Evening Standard
calling me a
whinging
, whining Tory. A few weeks later I bumped into him at a do in the American embassy. As we had both been drinking I thought I might have a bit of fun. I grabbed hold of his crotch and squeezed, enquiring who the whinging and whining Tory was now. At least he saw the funny side and we have been friends ever since. However, there were nearly fisticuffs when he read that I had voted against hunting with hounds.

‘Hayes, you little creep, you are a traitor.’ When I got out of this by saying, not entirely truthfully, that I had only done this for cynical political reasons, he smiled and bought me a drink, much relieved.

The Brute can be a bit of a handful after a few glasses. Once, we were in a television debate about the future of the EU. Before the red light came on he spotted a Eurosceptic whose wife had died in mysterious (but later fully explained)
circumstances
in a remote part of Europe.

‘Ah,’ he hissed, ‘Europe is a convenient place for you to dispose of inconvenient wives, isn’t it?’ It did not go down well.

One of my favourite MPs was Peter Lilley. We were elected together in 1983. Charming, very bright and on the inside track, he stood out as someone who would go far. However, he was done a terrible injustice. There was an urban myth that he was having an affair with Michael Portillo. This was utterly baseless and totally untrue. But I can shed light on how this rumour came into circulation. I was having lunch with the editor of a series that I occasionally used to present. We were in the Atrium, a grim aircraft hangar of a restaurant much loved by the media as it was in 4 Millbank, where the
television
and radio studios are. Things were getting a little jolly and we started chatting about Members.

‘I see Portillo has changed his bob for a bouffant,’ my chum commented, referring to Michael’s latest haircut.

‘I suspect it’s because he is shagging Lilley,’ I joked. All very jolly banter.

A few weeks later a mate from ITN sidled up to me saying he had got some high-grade gossip. My eyes sparkled. ‘You’ll never believe it, but Portillo is shagging Lilley.’ My face reddened. ‘But that’s utter bollocks,’ I protested, guessing that someone had been earwigging our jokey conversation and jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Over the years, the more I’ve tried to explain what really
happened, the more I am just met with cynical disbelief. So, guys, I am very sorry and am fond of you both.

Sadly, there was another occasion when my mouth got me into trouble. My dear friend Paul Routledge of the
Mirror
(of whom you will read more later) and I were having what he would call a ‘three-bottler lunch’. We were gossiping and
joshing
around and I recalled a nonsense piece of gossip involving Ann Widdecombe having a fling in the spare bedroom of David Amess’s in Basildon with a 55-year-old Catholic altar boy who was also an MP. We both had a good laugh and
staggered
off to do some work. A few days later he sidled up to me and thanked me for a story I had given him which he had written up in his
Observer
column, Captain Moonlight. I was a bit puzzled and asked him which story.

‘Oh, the Widdecombe one.’

‘Blimey, you haven’t written it, have you?’

‘Yes, it was a cracker.’

‘But it’s not bloody true.’

‘Shit.’ To her credit, Ann let ‘Routers’ off fairly lightly, as he is one of the really good guys in life. He prostrated himself in abject apology and donated a sum to one of her charities.

But I am not the only person much misunderstood. My old friend Richard Benson QC dines out on a true story of when he was a student in the 1960s. He used to share a flat with a lad who had just got a coveted job as a
copy-writer
for J. Walter Thompson. He was even more excited because he had been tasked to pitch some ideas to clients the next morning. So they went out to dinner to toss around a few suggestions.