An Unexpected MP (8 page)

If you think the Scotch Whisky Association is a worry, St Patrick’s Day at the Irish embassy can be lethal. I’ve known journos who’ve spent the whole night going round and round the Circle Line after one of those shindigs. But their do at a Tory Party conference proved the undoing of the splendid
Nicholas Scott. He claimed that he had become a little unwell due to a couple of glasses of wine and painkillers for his bad back. The Irish ambassador had other views and came out with what he thought was a helpful statement that Nick was enjoying Irish hospitality so much that they kept the bar open for him.

The next day, Scott joined us in the Spanish Bar (a Blackpool watering hole in the Winter Gardens). I was with my press mates, enjoying a couple of sharpeners before lunch. ‘Hi,’ says Nick, not looking at his best. ‘Do you know, I just can’t remember how on earth I got home last night?’

That’s when we showed him the front-page photo in the
Mirror
of him comatose in the back of a police car. Oh dear.

BBC hospitality can be pretty impressive too, although nothing as over the top as my Roman orgy or paddling through pools of whiskey at the Irish embassy. One lunch that sticks in my mind was with Duke Hussey, the war hero
chairman
of the governors. Duke was a very impressive guy and spectacularly brave. He lost a leg in battle and nearly died. Over lunch, he asked me what talent they should be looking out for. I told him that there were two young political
reporters
who were rather impressive, Huw Edwards and Jeremy Vine. Gentlemen, I think you owe me a drink.

At the end of the meal Duke was kind enough to lend me his car for the trip back to the Commons. As I opened the boot to put in my briefcase I noticed a long package wrapped in brown, with a little tag marked ‘The Chairman’.

‘What on earth is that?’ I asked the driver.

‘The chairman’s spare leg, sir. He never travels without a spare leg in the boot.’

Bless.

The saddest invitation was lunch with the directors of Sky TV. We were having a great time and were mightily amused that none of the media moguls could work the giant,
multi-screened
TV in the boardroom. They had to get a lad from IT to sort it. After a lot of fiddling around, the great beast flickered into life. We all thought that it was very funny that none of these great television titans could actually switch on the TV. Well, it proved to be good background noise to some pretty interesting conversation, until there was a news flash. Something to do with an incident at a school. And then before our eyes the horror of the Dunblane massacre unfurled. It was some of the most distressing television I had ever seen. All of us were moved and most of us were choking back sobs. We decided the best thing to do was go back to our families and hug our kids. It was a very traumatic day.

A
few days after my election I received a phone call from Anglia Television asking me if I would care to pop up to Norwich and take part in a discussion programme about the death penalty.

Capital punishment used to be debated in the House once a parliament. And pretty unedifying spectacles they were too. I was never one of the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade despite the fact that my grandfather had been murdered when I was twelve. I remember that when my father first broke the news to me he wept. It was first time I had ever seen him cry. My father was in the navy during the war and had been shipwrecked three times by the time he was twenty. He didn’t talk about it too much, but when you have seen your friends floating in the water, machine-gunned by German U-boat crews, and witnessed others have their skin peeled off them by superheated steam after a torpedo has slammed straight into the engine room, it must have a devastating effect upon a young man.

To make matters worse, after the murder, as my dad had been the last to see his father, he had been arrested while his mother lay critically injured in hospital. He was now a murder
suspect. My grandmother still had a bullet lodged near her lung when she died many years later. As it happened, the murderer was a young thug after the takings from the family business. He had flown over from Bermuda and shot my grandfather as soon as he opened the front door, with a gun concealed behind a newspaper. He then rushed up the stairs and shot my grandmother through the chest. That was his undoing. He had grabbed one of the chrome bars on the stairway, leaving a perfect set of fingerprints. He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released after seven years.

My grandfather was a popular figure in the East End of London and I will never forget how our local greengrocer offered to have the murderer killed in prison. My dad declined, but the boys broke his hand in such a way that he could never fire a gun again.

This is not the sort of book for me to set out at length why I never voted for the restoration of the death penalty. In a nutshell, I was convinced that state killings only provided a recruiting sergeant for the men of terror. And as I was a
barrister
, I knew only too well how serious miscarriages of justice can take place.

So off I rolled to Norwich. I was to be interviewed by Anglia’s political editor Malcolm Allsop; on the other side would be Eldon Griffiths, the right-wing Tory MP for Bury St Edmunds. Eldon was late, so there was no time for a rehearsal or proper introductions. He just sat down, shook me by the hand and the cameras rolled. After I’d said my anti-hanging bit, Eldon launched in. ‘Well, that’s the sort of view I would expect from a representative of the Labour Party.’

Malcolm and I were rather taken aback at this. When I recovered I politely pointed that we were members of the same party. Eldon, to his credit, was mortified and offered profuse apologies and suggested that we reshoot the question. I could see the pleading look in Malcolm’s eyes. So I suggested we carry on as no one would notice. Well, of course they did. This was great TV and when I entered the division lobby after the programme had been transmitted there was great amusement among the Cabinet, who were slapping me on the back.

After that I had a long and happy relationship with Anglia TV. They were like a family. When you rolled up to do a programme there would always be the same crew. A joy.

My favourite programme was the Anglia TV Christmas show where Charlie Kennedy, Graham Bright, John Gummer, Clement Freud and I played the most ridiculous parlour games. The public loved it.

John Gummer is an amazingly witty and entertaining guy. But if you believe what you read in the press, he was a preachy, sanctimonious little prig. Nothing could be further from the truth. After recording one of these shows he nearly got us thrown out of an Indian restaurant because he was making us laugh so much.

Clement Freud, though, was an odd bod. Plenty of wit but not a lot of humour. Like Archie Rice, he was dead behind the eyes. Gummer and he would be team captains and both would have to think of a witty twenty-second introduction for the trail. One rehearsal and then record. Every time Gummer thought of a better promo than Freud you knew it was going to be snaffled on the real take. He just hated to lose at anything.

But fond as I was of Clem, he did have a dark side. While
being escorted down the steps to the studio he turned to the pretty researcher whose mother and father were well known in theatrical circles and asked if she would like to go to bed with him. The poor girl stammered that she was terribly flattered but had a boyfriend. Without breaking step he just said, ‘Well, I fucked your mother and buggered your father; I was rather hoping for the full set.’ And off he went into the night.

A few weeks later I got a call from
Nationwide
. Come on, you must remember it. The flagship BBC teatime programme in the days before John Stapleton’s hair went black.

For some reason they were interested in making a frothy piece about the House of Commons gym. So I was drafted in to give it a bit of colour. All I can remember is walking into shot in a pinstriped suit, getting changed and doing a pretend work-out. Then a close shot of me back in the pinstripe,
leaving
the gym to perform some grave and weighty
parliamentary
business, then the camera pulling back to show that I was wearing no trousers, all to the chimes of Big Ben.

This, I suspect, is when my elders and betters realised that I was a serious politician.

The only other times I appeared publicly in sportswear were doing a fitness video with Heather Mills for
GMTV
and modelling Lycra with Christopher Biggins, although I suspect you will need deep counselling after picturing that.

It was all rather surreal, but not quite as bonkers as being asked to go on a photo shoot to promote what I was told was going to be a ‘groundbreaking new product’. For someone as vain as me, this sounded rather exciting.

So, I was told to meet the crew on the Victoria Embankment. To my confusion, I was challenged by two
rather worrying events. A lavatory had been placed on the pavement. And an almost totally naked male model was talking to the director. Some crew members were warding off Japanese tourists who thought that it was some quaint British tradition to have an outside loo and were
endeavouring
to pee in it. Then I heard the wail of a police siren and saw a marked car screeching to a halt and two large bobbies approaching. Their eyes darted from naked man, to lavatory in the middle of the pavement, to Japanese tourists
struggling
with their trousers and then to me. Heaven knows what was going through their minds. They looked at each other, shrugged and said, ‘Oh, hello, Mr Hayes, it’s only you then,’ shook me by the hand and muttered that everything was in order, and off they went.

A few moments later I discovered that the groundbreaking product I was promoting was a laxative. The shot was of the naked man on the loo in the pose of Rodin’s ‘Le Penseur’, with me grinning and holding a packet of the product (I really can’t remember the name). Somewhere deep in a vault, this awful image exists. I hope nobody ever finds it.

So, rather than me being the face of L’Oreal or the buttocks of Calvin Klein, I had become the bottom of a laxative.

But I did do lots of serious stuff too. A regular on
Newsnight
with Paxo and, of course, the
Today
programme. However, I do have a confession to make. John Humphrys may recall
interviewing
me down the line from home many years ago. The broadcast was rather echoey and at one stage a short whimper could just be heard.

So here’s how it went. I had been moved down the schedule and was desperate for the loo as I had had a dodgy curry the
night before. So I thought I’d take advantage of the time and plonked myself down on the seat. Then the phone rang. They were ready to interview live. I had no choice but to do it
in situ.
And just as it was getting interesting (ish), my four-
year-old
son decided that he wanted to play. The whimper was the result of the boy receiving a playful smack.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to do a lot of work with the BBC. In fact, I started with them when news interviews were recorded on film. If you think that they are overmanned now it was nothing compared to then. For a thirty-second interview there would be a cameraman, a sound man, an
electrician
, a producer and the interviewer. And a motorbike would be on standby to take the film to be developed and edited at Broadcasting House. It was all slimmed down by the time I was asked appear on
Children in Need.
Would I be prepared to paraglide over Harlow? Of course, not a problem. So I rolled up at North Weald aerodrome, where the cloud base was rather low. ‘Your costume is over there, Jerry,’ smiled a helpful young member of the crew.

Costume? Nobody mentioned anything about a costume, but what the hell, it’s for the kiddies. So, dressed as a chicken with big clawed feet and a big flappy beak, I soared up into the sky, eventually to come crashing down to earth. An assistant thought it would add a touch of humour to come bounding up with a packet of sage-and-onion stuffing.

But the live appearance a few days later was the most unnerving. Walking down the corridors of Elstree Studios dressed as a chicken doesn’t do a lot for one’s dignity. Until I noticed that the cast of
EastEnders
were dressed as elves and fairies, which made me feel a lot better. Eventually, I was
interviewed by Rob Curley, with one claw crossed over the other and a large gin and tonic in my hand.

However, I do want to put the record straight over a little misunderstanding with the comedian Mark Thomas. The party thought that it would be a good idea if I was interviewed on his then famous
Mark Thomas Comedy Product.
So I trekked down to the studios, just off Carnaby Street. The lights were on but there wasn’t a camera in sight. But there was Mark, sitting on a sofa, dressed as a bear. He asked if I’d care to peep behind the sofa, see my costume and put it on. Well, I had a peep and didn’t like what I saw: a six-foot penis costume with a big blue vein down the side, two little eye holes, and slits for my arms to come through.

Well, you can imagine the conversation. ‘You must be fucking joking …
The Sun
will have a field day … everyone sniggering that Hayes doesn’t need to dress as a prick … blah, blah, blah.’ Little did I know that I had been tricked by the producer, a ghastly, tubby, humourless man called Dom Joly (yes, that one from
Trigger Happy TV
and
I’m a Celebrity
) who had planted hidden cameras to record my expletives and eventually played them on air. He tried to convince Michael Grade, then CEO of Channel 4, that by signing the release form I had consented to be secretly filmed. He failed. But I never put that damn penis suit on.

Some of my happiest broadcasting experiences were
working
with my old friend Ed Boyle. Ed is a creative genius but should be locked away in a darkened room and kept well away from management, whom he despised. He was the first political editor of Independent Radio News, a brilliant writer, a fantastic producer, but quite, quite bonkers. I was lucky
enough, with Charlie Kennedy, Ken Livingstone and Tony Banks, to be part of his parliamentary repertory company. He wrote and produced two wonderful series for us:
Party Pieces
on Capital Radio and a nightly live TV show,
Left, Right and Centre
on BSB (the first UK extraterrestrial broadcasting company, later bought by News International and rolled up with Sky). It was thanks to Ed that I learned to write, and read an autocue. I owe him a very great debt.

However, he did have a penchant for getting into scrapes. As political editor of Independent Radio News, he had to put together packages for the regions. These were the days before digital. Every studio had an enormous tape deck and as soon as you made your microphone live by
pushing
your fader forward, the tape recorder would swing into action. Obviously, you only lifted those clips you wanted for the package and that was done by marking the tape with a chinagraph pencil, cutting it, splicing it together and putting it in a beta cassette. This would be ‘fired’ by putting it in a slot and pushing the fader forward. That’s how the first jingles were made. And darn time-consuming it was too. But imagine putting together a budget package region by region with each clip being different. And only one guy to do it, Ed Boyle. It used to drive him totally crazy, or rather even
more
crazy. And as he was doing the voice-overs he would be shouting, swearing and generally cursing … always being careful to make sure that those bits were cut out. Until a grateful nation heard Ed’s wonderful nationally networked Budget round-up. It ended rather oddly: ‘Fuck, fuck, oh God … wankers … shit, shit, bollocks.’

But rather than being sacked, the great man was given an
assistant, the equally bonkers Max Cotton, who went on to do rather well at the BBC.

Ed and I put together a great quiz show called
A Kick in the Ballots.
It was from a germ of an idea by me, and Ed’s genius did the rest. Charlie Kennedy was in the chair, with Neil Kinnock and a few others on the two competing panels. One of the games Ed devised was called ‘U-turn’. A politician would start speaking in favour of an idea and then the chair would press a buzzer and they had to oppose it. So I would start off opposing the death penalty until Charlie pressed the buzzer, shouting, ‘U-turn.’ I would then, in mid-sentence, say, ‘on the other hand…’ and launch into an argument in favour. The trouble was that MPs could do this so seamlessly as to make the programme popular with the public but hated by MPs. They gave me a lot of stick over it. ‘Your damned programme is making us a laughing stock,’ huffed some ancient grandee. Oddly, I thought that many of them were doing that without any help from me.