Lennon Saviour of E
29-04-2007, 17:27
Just a clip of the abridged first bit of the Mail's thingy on Littlejohn's Britain (available in all quality book shops from 5th May) from yesterday:
Nor did we hold it against him. Everyone knew that Ally was more of a Labour cheerleader than a proper reporter.
And it was in that ad hoc capacity that he invited my wife and me to dinner at his home in North London. He thought it was time that I got to know a rising young Labour frontbencher, Tony Blair.
As it happened, I had met Blair a couple of times before in his role as Shadow Employment Secretary under Kinnock.
Fleet Street's thirsty labour correspondents, of whom I was one before I became an equally thirsty columnist, used to drink in Blackpool's last residential pub, the Empress, a former haunt of music hall and variety artistes tucked away in the warren of backstreets behind the Imperial Hotel, which served as Northern headquarters for the annual seaside political conferences.
What attracted us to it was a flexible attitude to the then restrictive licensing laws, a decent jukebox, cask ales and a complete absence of politicians and trades union leaders, who didn't seem to know it existed. Which suited us just fine.
We were in there one lunchtime when a fresh, unfamiliar face turned up. He looked vaguely familiar but no one could place him.
The beaming newcomer bounded over to the veteran industrial correspondent of the communist Morning Star newspaper, Mick Costello, known to most of us as "Elvis", who was quietly nursing his hangover.
He grabbed Elvis by the hand and started shaking it vigorously.
"Hi, Mick, good to see you." "Who the f*** are you?" growled Elvis.
"Tony Blair, Shadow Employment," said Blair.
"Well you can f*** off." There was a brief, embarrassed silence, but Blair's rictus grin didn't crack. Without missing a beat, he walked over to the bar, bought himself a pint, and proceeded to introduce himself to the rest of us.
Ten minutes later, he wished us all a cheery goodbye.
Missing you already. "What was all that about?" we asked.
"F*** knows," was the general conclusion. But we had to admit he had chutzpah. This boy was either going to vanish without trace or was going to go far.
Even though Blair is roughly the same age as me, back then he looked about 12. This led me to christen him "Doogie Howser MP" - after Doogie Howser MD, a character in an American TV show based around a teenage prodigy who worked as a doctor.
Blair even looked like Doogie. I think he was flattered that someone had taken some notice of him at long last.
When Kinnock was beaten by John Major and succeeded by the late John Smith, Blair was hailed as part of the coming generation and appointed Shadow Home Secretary - and along with Gordon Brown was being spoken of in some circles as a future Labour leader.
It was with this in mind that Ally decided to pin his colours to Blair and begin a charm offensive to win over those members of the Press they thought could be useful to them.
By then, I was presenting a three-hour morning show on London's LBC and Alastair was one of my regular political pundits. So was Charles Kennedy, then president of the Liberal Democrats.
It was no surprise, then, to find Charlie also on the guest list. This was when Blair was still buying into the "Big Tent" view of politics as one big "I'd like to teach the world to sing" Coke commercial.
Although Charlie was one of my radio pundits, politically the only big tent you would find the pair of us in would be the beer tent.
Charlie was there with his then girlfriend, the publisher Georgina Capel. I was with my wife, Wendy, and we were also joined by Ally's neighbour and my old friend and Daily Mail colleague Baz Bamigboye and his wife, Trish.
I was sitting in the middle of the table, opposite Tony, and next to his wife, Cherie, whom I'd never met before. (Years later, when I got to know more about the scary Mrs Blair, I christened her "the Wicked Witch" - a nickname which seems to have stuck.)
Alastair's wife prepared fish pie, and although Ally had foresworn the booze following his nervous breakdown a few years earlier, there was plenty of chilled Chablis on tap - which the rest of us (or at least Baz, Charlie and me) took full advantage of.
After a convivial couple of hours of small talk and laughter, things started to get serious over the cheese course.
Here was the big pitch. Tony fixed me in the eye and began to explain why Britain needed a Labour government. Only Labour could tackle welfarism, he explained.
It had to come from the Left because the Tories were so discredited and distrusted. Didn't I agree?
Oh, absolutely, Tone. Any more Chablis, Ally?
Did I have any thoughts? Blair wanted to know. He was fascinated to hear my take on the world.
"Well, it's like this," I explained. "You need a totem, you need to set an example."
"Great. What did you have in mind, Richard?" he asked.
"Liverpool," I said, taking another glug of white. Baz started spluttering with laughter. I looked down the table for Charlie Kennedy's reaction, but observed that he was fast asleep, face down in his fish pie.
"Er, Liverpool?" Blair replied, his face freezing.
"Yep, Liverpool," I said. (This was not long after the BBC series Boys From The Blackstuff, which made Liverpool a byword for economic depression, unemployment, a rampant black economy and welfare fraud - a reputation no longer deserved, I should add, lest the wacky Scousers overreact in the same way as they did when Boris Johnson questioned their rectitude in The Spectator in 2005.)
"Why, um, Liverpool?" Simple, I explained. Merseyside was well-known for welfarism. If Blair could tackle the problem there, he could beat it anywhere.
He seemed to accept my thesis, but wondered what exactly I had in mind. By this time, warming to my theme, I decided to spell it out, ignoring my wife's apprehensive expression across the table.
"It's like this. You put tanks on the East Lancs Road, submarines in the River Mersey and then surround the place with barbed wire.
"Then you send in the bombers and turn the place into a car park. When the dust settles, you invite the Hong Kong Chinese to take over. Job done."
The more absurd and extreme my argument became, the wider became Blair's eyes and grin. He started nodding vigorously, maniacally almost.
I was joking. (I think. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things generally do after a few bottles of wine.)
Ally had his head in his hands. Charlie was still asleep. Wendy gave me one of those resigned looks she's thrown me so many times over the past 30-odd years of marriage. Next to me, from the direction of Mrs Blair, I was aware of a certain "froideur."It was like sitting next to Ice Station Zebra.
"Um, well, I hear what you say. Interesting," said Tony, darting glances between Ally, me and his subzero spouse.
"I think it's time we were going," said Cherie - from what I remember, about the only thing she said all night. And with that -"Lovely evening, so good talking to you" etc - they were gone.
In the cab on the way home, Wendy asked me what was all the Liverpool stuff about. Didn't I know who she was?
Who? Mrs B. Some stuck-up, Left-wing Islington brief, isn't she?
You do know who her dad is? Not a clue.
Wendy explained that Mrs Blair was, in fact, Liverpool-raised Cherie Booth, daughter of the actor Tony Booth, star of Till Death Us Do Part.
So while I'd been banging on about scrounging Scouse gits, the father of the woman I was sitting next to was famous not just for playing a Scouse git but for playing the most famous Scouse git in Britain.
And I'd also managed, albeit in jest, to advocate the total destruction of the city she had grown up in.
(Maybe I should read the weekend supplements more often. Then I might have stumbled across the profile of C. Blair which my wife had read while I was checking out the football pages.)
Oh well. That's us off the Christmas card list, I figured. Then I wondered: why the hell didn't "he" say something? Why did he sit there grinning and nodding instead of saying something like:
"Look, I know you're only joking, Rich, but I think I should point out that, er, actually, ha, ha, Cherie's from Liverpool . . ."?
Blair would rather risk a night in the spare bedroom than stop in full flow a half-p***ed hack whom he hoped to impress. I think that was the night I worked Blair out.
Whenever I met him subsequently, he always agreed with me on just about everything. Not that he meant it, just that his career has been built on being all things to all men.
Nor did we hold it against him. Everyone knew that Ally was more of a Labour cheerleader than a proper reporter.
And it was in that ad hoc capacity that he invited my wife and me to dinner at his home in North London. He thought it was time that I got to know a rising young Labour frontbencher, Tony Blair.
As it happened, I had met Blair a couple of times before in his role as Shadow Employment Secretary under Kinnock.
Fleet Street's thirsty labour correspondents, of whom I was one before I became an equally thirsty columnist, used to drink in Blackpool's last residential pub, the Empress, a former haunt of music hall and variety artistes tucked away in the warren of backstreets behind the Imperial Hotel, which served as Northern headquarters for the annual seaside political conferences.
What attracted us to it was a flexible attitude to the then restrictive licensing laws, a decent jukebox, cask ales and a complete absence of politicians and trades union leaders, who didn't seem to know it existed. Which suited us just fine.
We were in there one lunchtime when a fresh, unfamiliar face turned up. He looked vaguely familiar but no one could place him.
The beaming newcomer bounded over to the veteran industrial correspondent of the communist Morning Star newspaper, Mick Costello, known to most of us as "Elvis", who was quietly nursing his hangover.
He grabbed Elvis by the hand and started shaking it vigorously.
"Hi, Mick, good to see you." "Who the f*** are you?" growled Elvis.
"Tony Blair, Shadow Employment," said Blair.
"Well you can f*** off." There was a brief, embarrassed silence, but Blair's rictus grin didn't crack. Without missing a beat, he walked over to the bar, bought himself a pint, and proceeded to introduce himself to the rest of us.
Ten minutes later, he wished us all a cheery goodbye.
Missing you already. "What was all that about?" we asked.
"F*** knows," was the general conclusion. But we had to admit he had chutzpah. This boy was either going to vanish without trace or was going to go far.
Even though Blair is roughly the same age as me, back then he looked about 12. This led me to christen him "Doogie Howser MP" - after Doogie Howser MD, a character in an American TV show based around a teenage prodigy who worked as a doctor.
Blair even looked like Doogie. I think he was flattered that someone had taken some notice of him at long last.
When Kinnock was beaten by John Major and succeeded by the late John Smith, Blair was hailed as part of the coming generation and appointed Shadow Home Secretary - and along with Gordon Brown was being spoken of in some circles as a future Labour leader.
It was with this in mind that Ally decided to pin his colours to Blair and begin a charm offensive to win over those members of the Press they thought could be useful to them.
By then, I was presenting a three-hour morning show on London's LBC and Alastair was one of my regular political pundits. So was Charles Kennedy, then president of the Liberal Democrats.
It was no surprise, then, to find Charlie also on the guest list. This was when Blair was still buying into the "Big Tent" view of politics as one big "I'd like to teach the world to sing" Coke commercial.
Although Charlie was one of my radio pundits, politically the only big tent you would find the pair of us in would be the beer tent.
Charlie was there with his then girlfriend, the publisher Georgina Capel. I was with my wife, Wendy, and we were also joined by Ally's neighbour and my old friend and Daily Mail colleague Baz Bamigboye and his wife, Trish.
I was sitting in the middle of the table, opposite Tony, and next to his wife, Cherie, whom I'd never met before. (Years later, when I got to know more about the scary Mrs Blair, I christened her "the Wicked Witch" - a nickname which seems to have stuck.)
Alastair's wife prepared fish pie, and although Ally had foresworn the booze following his nervous breakdown a few years earlier, there was plenty of chilled Chablis on tap - which the rest of us (or at least Baz, Charlie and me) took full advantage of.
After a convivial couple of hours of small talk and laughter, things started to get serious over the cheese course.
Here was the big pitch. Tony fixed me in the eye and began to explain why Britain needed a Labour government. Only Labour could tackle welfarism, he explained.
It had to come from the Left because the Tories were so discredited and distrusted. Didn't I agree?
Oh, absolutely, Tone. Any more Chablis, Ally?
Did I have any thoughts? Blair wanted to know. He was fascinated to hear my take on the world.
"Well, it's like this," I explained. "You need a totem, you need to set an example."
"Great. What did you have in mind, Richard?" he asked.
"Liverpool," I said, taking another glug of white. Baz started spluttering with laughter. I looked down the table for Charlie Kennedy's reaction, but observed that he was fast asleep, face down in his fish pie.
"Er, Liverpool?" Blair replied, his face freezing.
"Yep, Liverpool," I said. (This was not long after the BBC series Boys From The Blackstuff, which made Liverpool a byword for economic depression, unemployment, a rampant black economy and welfare fraud - a reputation no longer deserved, I should add, lest the wacky Scousers overreact in the same way as they did when Boris Johnson questioned their rectitude in The Spectator in 2005.)
"Why, um, Liverpool?" Simple, I explained. Merseyside was well-known for welfarism. If Blair could tackle the problem there, he could beat it anywhere.
He seemed to accept my thesis, but wondered what exactly I had in mind. By this time, warming to my theme, I decided to spell it out, ignoring my wife's apprehensive expression across the table.
"It's like this. You put tanks on the East Lancs Road, submarines in the River Mersey and then surround the place with barbed wire.
"Then you send in the bombers and turn the place into a car park. When the dust settles, you invite the Hong Kong Chinese to take over. Job done."
The more absurd and extreme my argument became, the wider became Blair's eyes and grin. He started nodding vigorously, maniacally almost.
I was joking. (I think. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things generally do after a few bottles of wine.)
Ally had his head in his hands. Charlie was still asleep. Wendy gave me one of those resigned looks she's thrown me so many times over the past 30-odd years of marriage. Next to me, from the direction of Mrs Blair, I was aware of a certain "froideur."It was like sitting next to Ice Station Zebra.
"Um, well, I hear what you say. Interesting," said Tony, darting glances between Ally, me and his subzero spouse.
"I think it's time we were going," said Cherie - from what I remember, about the only thing she said all night. And with that -"Lovely evening, so good talking to you" etc - they were gone.
In the cab on the way home, Wendy asked me what was all the Liverpool stuff about. Didn't I know who she was?
Who? Mrs B. Some stuck-up, Left-wing Islington brief, isn't she?
You do know who her dad is? Not a clue.
Wendy explained that Mrs Blair was, in fact, Liverpool-raised Cherie Booth, daughter of the actor Tony Booth, star of Till Death Us Do Part.
So while I'd been banging on about scrounging Scouse gits, the father of the woman I was sitting next to was famous not just for playing a Scouse git but for playing the most famous Scouse git in Britain.
And I'd also managed, albeit in jest, to advocate the total destruction of the city she had grown up in.
(Maybe I should read the weekend supplements more often. Then I might have stumbled across the profile of C. Blair which my wife had read while I was checking out the football pages.)
Oh well. That's us off the Christmas card list, I figured. Then I wondered: why the hell didn't "he" say something? Why did he sit there grinning and nodding instead of saying something like:
"Look, I know you're only joking, Rich, but I think I should point out that, er, actually, ha, ha, Cherie's from Liverpool . . ."?
Blair would rather risk a night in the spare bedroom than stop in full flow a half-p***ed hack whom he hoped to impress. I think that was the night I worked Blair out.
Whenever I met him subsequently, he always agreed with me on just about everything. Not that he meant it, just that his career has been built on being all things to all men.