CRAIG BROWN: Dear Diary, the party was deadly dull…
After 40 years, Jeffrey Archer has thrown his very last Christmas party at his swanky London penthouse flat.
My colleague Andrew Pierce listed what he generously described as ‘a glittering line-up of guests’. They were ‘Dame Joan Collins, Sir Tim Rice, a sprinkling of former Tory leaders and no fewer than five former Chancellors’. To me, it sounds deadly dull, but perhaps I’m just being picky.
Most people who give Christmas parties, however dreadful, can expect to receive the odd thank you letter congratulating them on a marvellous evening.
But, over the years, Lord Archer has accrued a circle of acquaintances who, though they may gush as they bid him goodbye, only say what they really think in their diaries, which they publish a few years later.
Gyles Brandreth was a regular attender until 1990, when his wife Michele put her foot down. Gyles is one of the best-mannered people I know, so I am sure he would have sent his apologies.
Lord Archer (pictured) has accrued a circle of acquaintances who, though they may gush as they bid him goodbye, only say what they really think in their diaries
Gyles Brandreth (pictured) said of Archer’s parties: ‘It’s just self regarding men preening themselves, looking over your shoulder all the time for someone more interesting, more famous, more like them. Ghastly. Never again’
But nine years later, he published his diaries. ‘Tonight we are not going to Jeffrey Archer’s party,’ reads his entry for December, 12, 1990.
‘I wanted to go, but Michele can’t face it. All that nonsense of “Krug and shepherd’s pie”, and there are always too many people, and nobody wants to talk to the wives — ever.
‘It’s just self regarding men preening themselves, looking over your shoulder all the time for someone more interesting, more famous, more like them. Ghastly. Never again.’
One of those who made it that same year was Woodrow Wyatt, the former MP, peer and chairman of the Tote. Like Brandreth, Wyatt kept a diary. Also like Brandreth, his diaries were published nine years later.
‘Jeffrey Archer was in his usual ebullient form. He had a 4ft high model of W.G. Grace in the hall,’ reads his diary entry, ‘but I don’t think he can play for toffee.’
‘He had a 4ft high model of W.G. Grace in the hall, but I don’t think he can play for toffee,’ Woodrow Wyatt, the former MP, (pictured) said of Archer
Edwina Currie also visited Archer, though not for his Christmas party. He had offered to give her advice on writing a novel, so she accepted his invitation to his penthouse flat in January 1989.
She was immediately underwhelmed. ‘It’s an unattractive tower office block, quite unexceptional: you press the appropriate buzzer and in you go.’
On the way up in the lift, she asked Archer if he owned the whole block. ‘He looked startled, as if he wasn’t usually asked that, then a bit sheepish and said, yes.’
In the footnote below, she adds: ‘It seems that this was untrue.’
Once she got to the penthouse, she was impressed by the views, but not by her boastful host.
‘Most of the conversation was very businesslike, clipped, a bit loud, with him yelling for someone to answer the phone, “I’ve got three staff here, where are they?” (twice) and making calls on my behalf, hauling people out of meetings to talk to him, and generally being very noisy and aggressive and showing off.’
Her subsequent diary entries were even less cordial: ‘We talked about him in the tea room. Colleagues who remembered him from 1969 to 1973 recall someone who was already a bulls****er, who could not clearly distinguish truth from reality… He was regarded as impossibly rude and indiscreet. I’ve no intention of ending up like him.’ (July 9, 1989)
‘Personally, I think Archer is ghastly. Not just a fool and a rogue, but a miserable liar.’ (May 26, 1995).
Another political diarist, Alan Clark, was dismissive of Jeffrey Archer’s pride and joy. Visiting the billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith’s home in Mexico in February 1994, he noted that it ‘makes Jeffrey Archer’s “apartment” look like a journalistic bolthole.’
He continued to go to Archer’s Christmas parties but, by 1998, he was taking a crafty precaution: he put on a dinner jacket, ‘making it look as if we “have to go on”.’
As he went up in the lift to the famous penthouse, he ran into Geoffrey Howe, who was leaving. ‘“Going on to somewhere smarter,” he observed.’
Like so many before and after, he found that the famous party was not all it was cracked up to be. ‘Alas, his status stinks,’ Clark wrote in his diary. ‘The room was B-list.’
The moral is surely this: before inviting friends to your Christmas party, make sure they don’t keep diaries. Cheers!
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