Gyles Brandreth is amazed that it has taken me “90 minutes”, he roars, “to ask me if I’m gay”. And indeed, as the teddy-fancying, novelty jumper-toting, somewhat la-di-dah former Tory MP flings himself onto the bed in the Oscar Wilde suite at the Cadogan hotel in Knightsbridge, where he is having his picture taken, and where “Oscar was arrested, and they now use for gay honeymoons”, I rather wonder what took me so long as well.
But it doesn’t matter, because “I have never snogged a man, Camilla”, continues the 61-year-old firmly, whipping off his jacket with a vaudeville flourish. “Never, never, never. And do you know? I’ve never wanted to either.” Still, he admits that when he was “young and pretty” he was something of a target for “middle-aged comics. Lots of them! Frankie Howerd for one . . .”
In fact, when it came to editing the technicolour dreamcoat of Brandreth’s life for the latest volume of his diaries, “one of the greatest disappointments — beyond turning down a business proposal from Richard Branson, when he was 17 and I was 18, and me thinking, ‘Who is this long-haired kangaroo leaping about the room, I’m not going anywhere with him?’ — was that of all the lovely actresses, not one has ever come on to me, not one!” he says. Not even Jane Asher, I ask? “No!” Shuuurely Amanda Donohoe? According to the diaries, she has “had ’em all, girls, boys, Adam Ant”?
“No!” he sighs again, unbuttoning the cuffs on his shirt, a surprisingly low-watt mauve number, as we head for the bar below (where he will order cappuccinos and clink them with me, saying: “Here’s to us”). “I slept with Joanna Lumley once but she was on one sofa and I was on the other . . .”
Oh, the missed opportunities of Gyles Brandreth. Compiling the diaries, a monster collection of witty aperçus and celebrity handshaking, 1959-2009, was a painful experience. “Don’t go back, don’t go baaaack,” he declaims, with Lady Bracknell inflection. There was the sheer volume, too: he writes “several thousand words every day”, so there were boxes and boxes to get through at the home in Barnes, southwest London, that he shares with his wife Michèle.
He had to “ditch 98% of it”, but thankfully we have held onto memorable events such as the time he vomited on Ted Heath’s shoes; meeting Diana, Princess of Wales — “I thought (ungallantly) that her skin had rather gone to pot”; making friends with the Duke of Edinburgh — “I told him I had had breakfast with Blake Carrington. He said, ‘I haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about. I had breakfast with the Queen”; and the time he went to Copenhagen on a porn “fact-finding” mission with Lord Longford — “the girl and the giraffe ... beyond your wildest dreams”. I absolutely loved them; witty and fluid, they are crammed with detail, including brilliantly catty asides: “Jeremy Beadle (warm heart, withered hand).” Anything juicy he might have missed out?
“I’m appalled if I have,” he says, but great historical events have, it seems, been skimmed over. “I mean, did I include the fall of the Berlin Wall? No. Did I include the Berlin Wall teddy bear story? No.”
Okay, go on, I say. “I received a letter from an East Berlin journalist at the height of the cold war,” he rum-te-tums. He has a curiously attractive manner: larky, wolfish. “We were living in Stratford [where he founded the teddy bear museum]. ‘Dear Herr Brandreth. Like you, I have loff for tiddy bear. I am in East Berlin and I would like a tiddy bear for me.’ So I went, with my wife and my children,” he says, getting up to act out the story. “The Berlin Wall is there. I get to Checkpoint Charlie at an agreed time. He is there. At the agreed moment, we both chuck the bears,” he throws his arms up, “and they cross as they sail over the Wall.” He pauses. “In the movie, darling,” he says, “there won’t be a dry eye in the house.”
Gott im Himmel. How to explain Gyles Brandreth? If aliens landed tomorrow, I wouldn’t know what to say — although I am sure Brandreth would. He is a professional talker, once breaking the world record for the longest after-dinner speech (12½ hours). He gallops through two anecdotes about Jeffrey Archer and one about the Duke of Edinburgh before I’ve even turned my recorder on.
Anyway, if aliens landed, he says he would tell them he is “a writer”, and indeed, for the past 10 years this is mostly what he has been, turning out books on the royal family and his Oscar Wilde murder mysteries, which as Michèle once pointed out, sell better in the countries where he hasn’t done book tours. Michèle didn’t like his preceding Tory phase either, in fact “there was dancing in the streets” in 1997 when he lost his Chester seat, but Brandreth nevertheless had assumed the role of whip under John Major with gusto and was sorry to lose.
He was already famous, of course, before he entered politics in 1992, having bounced around on the GMTV sofa for the best part of the 1980s in those “Val Doonican has just puked on me” jumpers. He had been pretty notorious before that, too, as a theatre impresario in the 1970s, and, earlier, as the former president of the Oxford Union, he had been tipped (mostly by himself), to be the next prime minister but three.
The presidential phase seemed to take up the Sixties, although he was officially president for only eight weeks, but characteristically he milked it, meeting as many celebrities as possible, so by the time he left Oxford, the Old Bedalian son of a London barrister was already a media star, a motormouth go-to man on everything from prison reform to Scrabble. As, er, he is now?
“There’s been absolutely no development from the age of 11,” he says, thrilled. “A couple of years ago I played Malvolio, which I had played at school. My wife said, ‘Really, choose a different part! Is there going to be no progress?’”
She has a point, I say. Brandreth shrugs. “I have a variety of ... interests. People phone up and say, ‘Oh, you’re the person . . .’ and you become the world authority on Scrabble. The truth is that I only occasionally play Scrabble, and I am only vaguely interested in teddies.” So why did you found a whole museum, then? “Because I follow things through! Everything I do, I do properly. I didn’t have a profound interest in teddy bears but when Jim Henson gives you the original Fozzie Bear . . .”
Something in his eyes tells me he is more than “vaguely interested in teddies”. Perhaps he is just energetically whimsical? How does Michèle put up with this? Doesn’t she want to die when she sees her husband “dressed as a dinosaur at the Magpie toy shop in Dartford”, or gearing up to “flip the tiniest pancake in the world”?
“That’s what she would say,” he sighs. “How can you expect to be taken seriously? But I do things that are substantial, writing plays, as well as things that I find amusing.”
When I ask him why he loves particularly awful people such as Fanny Cradock, Jeffrey Archer and Prince Philip, he replies: “They’re larger than life.” He met Philip through the National Playing Fields Association and often goes to Buckingham Palace. In fact, he went last Wednesday and flips open his diary to prove it: “Buckingham Palace,” he reads. “All friendly in the state dining room but a little strange ... the food was excellent, the fresh pineapple best, the camp footmen so playful as ever.”
Would he ever return to politics? The Lords? If only for the costume?
“I will do anything to help and serve David Cameron,” he says. “I’m a huge admirer, and one of the joys of keeping a diary is that you’re able to point out that when David Cameron was a political adviser to Norman Lamont, and when Lamont was dropped by John Major, his special advisers were dropped as well. I thought it was a mistake to drop him, so I wrote a memo to the new chancellor, Kenneth Clarke. I said, we mustn’t lose this man, he is gold, and I remember having a conversation with Clarke, who was saying he’s Lamont’s man, very right-wing. I said, no no, he was working for Lamont and therefore reflected Lamont, but I think you’ll find he’s our kind of Conservative, a liberal Conservative. Clarke still dropped him. Wouldn’t be persuaded. Wouldn’t. He went. I failed. But it can’t be taken away from me that I spotted him when people hadn’t even heard of him.”
In the meantime, he will have to busy himself with the book, which he is keen to promote at any cost. Why don’t you say you had an affair with Lord Snowdon, I say.
“Well, I didn’t,” he says, “but what is so nice about Lord Snowdon is that if he thought it would help with the sales of my book, he’d be quite happy to go along with the idea. In fact, I will give him a call now.” He produces his BlackBerry. Dials. “Hello, Tony. This is Gyles Brandreth here.” Pause. “Well, I’m very happy and the reason I’m phoning you is a) to say I’m very happy; b) to say that I was at Le Depot on Saturday night and I thought about you and I thought I’m going to phone Tony and make a date for lunch. And now I have sat down with a girl called Camilla. No, another one, a younger one. She’s very very nice, and she asked me about you. I said I loved you, so she asked if we’d had an affair.” He puts his hands over the phone: “He’s laughing. He’s laughing.” He pauses. “Well, rest assured I shan’t be saying that, so you need have no fears. I shan’t be saying that ... Oh you are in naughty form.” He hangs up.
“He’s entering into the spirit of it. I think he’s suggesting that a full-blown affair is what we could announce. But I want to make it clear that we did not. Anyway, he sends you lots of love, and me lots of love.”
Phillip palms off a gift of lilac gloves to Charles
Tuesday, July 1, 1986 Prince Philip came to Ovington Square today. We gave him a belated birthday present: three pairs of carriage-driving gloves. HRH unwrapped the parcel and inspected his gift. The first pair were a light tan colour. He sniffed approvingly. The second pair were dark tan. He said: “Thank you very much.”
The third pair were a pale lilac colour. He held them up disdainfully between his thumb and forefinger and said: “I think we'll give these to the Prince of Wales.”
Thursday, November 5, 1987 1pm lunch with Jeffrey again at Sambuca in Sloane Square. I arrived a little early and sat at the window table. At around 12.55pm I saw Jeffrey’s car coming round the square, but it didn’t stop — it went on round. In all, the car circled Sloane Square three times — then Jeffrey got out, came into the restaurant and sat down.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
“What was all what about?”
“You, driving round and round.”
He pointed to the clock above the door. “What time is it?”
“One o’clock.”
“Exactly,” said Jeffrey. “I am never early. I am never late. I am Jeffrey Archer.”
Something Sensational to Read in the Train: the Diary of a Lifetime by Gyles Brandreth, is published by John Murray on Thursday
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