My love affair with advertising had ended. The idea of spending any more time cramming food and drink down the throats of greedy, scared, demanding clients was abhorrent. I ceased going into New Bond Street and sat in my Chelsea flat trying to write a film script.
James Garrett was remarkably tolerant of my defection. I continued to draw a salary, but one day in the spring of 1970 he called to ask if I’d give him a hand making Ted Heath prime minister. Others were pitching for the Conservative party’s TV campaign in the forthcoming general election, but James was close to landing it, he believed. He asked me to join him to take a brief from William Whitelaw.
Whitelaw came to that meeting accompanied by two short-haired, pinstriped hounds from Central Office he kept on a short leash, who were not allowed to speak but only bark approval. In his mid-fifties, he was dressed in a blue Savile Row three-piece suit in a retro-toff style no longer truly fashionable. To my eye it looked just a touch too big for him, particularly in the seat – but perhaps it had been built so to allow for growth. His manner was affable, a bland upper-class benignity. He gave off an air of confidence and competence. ‘Everyone needs a Willie,’ as Maggie Thatcher would later say of him. He was the ideal chief-of-staff, incisive, calm, and seemingly above the battle.
As for myself, I wore pale-grey flannel – the trousers just slightly flared in deference to the style then coming into vogue – a wide-brimmed Herbert Johnson hat – which, naturally, I removed on meeting him – and a striped tie matching his own. He could see at once I was the right sort of chap to have on board.
The reason for this meeting was that Harold Wilson had dissolved Parliament, announcing a general election in a month’s time. Rejecting suggestions that uncertainty over the economy had led him to choose this early date, Wilson claimed it was prompted by the start to negotiations over Britain’s entry to the Common Market, which he believed best handled by a new government.
The timing was opportune for the socialists. Wilson’s government had weathered recession and a sterling devaluation, but the economy was now in recovery. A Gallup poll published in the Daily Telegraph showed a Labour lead over the Conservatives of 7.5 points, enough to guarantee a very substantial majority in the election. ‘The thrust of their strategy will be, “the wind blows fair, the ship is stable, why change the crew?”’ Whitelaw informed us, and the pinstripes pricked their ears and growled aggressively on cue.
To counter this the Conservative campaign would sell the policies in their manifesto: to cut back the cost of government and lower tax; restore British forces to the Persian Gulf and Far East; direct social services to those most in need, and improve the economy to the benefit of all … but also something else … Whitelaw’s voice altered in tone as he spoke of this and, scenting what was coming, the pinstripe hounds sat up and began to shift and wag their bottoms expectantly.
… something less tangible, perhaps, Whitelaw continued, but more … more spiritual, more inspiring … a new reputable and moral approach … a whole new style of government! Unable to restrain themselves, both pinstripes began to bark excitedly at this point, jumping up in their enthusiasm. Indulgently Whitelaw allowed them to do so before saying, ‘One Nation! A Better Tomorrow!’ It was the rallying cry of the campaign and the slogan was Heath’s own idea, it seemed. In Australia to skipper his yacht in the Sidney–Hobart race, he’d asked his chauffeur, ‘Why is everyone in such good form?’ ‘Because we know tomorrow will be better than today,’ the man had apparently told him. Improbable, I thought. I’d never met a Strine capable of such shit-licking sanctimony. The man had probably muttered, ‘Yer’d be smiling too if yer were sitting with a six-inch nail up yer bum, yer Pom poppie,’ and Heath had misheard him.
If Garrett’s succeeded in obtaining this account, what we would be providing to the campaign were six ten-minute films to be transmitted at peak time on all channels in the course of the next four weeks. Party Political Broadcasts, the convention had derived from radio, its traditional form an address by the party leader at his desk. The format could not have been more dull. Since the previous election, the nation had rearranged its living room. No longer was the seating grouped around the fireplace and radio but in front of the box. Accustomed as people now were to the cutting rhythms of TV, ten minutes was an enormously long time. Their attention span had shrunk to sixty seconds, and not all could manage that.
James’s original and innovative proposal – which he’d masterminded with Barry Day and PR wizard Geoffrey Tucker, plus of course Central Office – was that we should treat each ten-minute length as a mini-programme, incorporating short interviews, clips from ministers’ speeches, soundbites … plus commercials selling particular ideas or policies. It was an excellent notion and one Whitelaw seemed to like. ‘I want every major speech throughout the country covered, not just by the networks but by us,’ he said. ‘Reggie Maudling … Iain Macleod … Geoffrey Rippon on Europe … Peter Walker on housing … and Maggie and, of course, we must use Chris Chataway.’
Throughout the meeting I’d been taking notes, for later James and I would have to calculate the number of camera crews, studio space and logistics deriving from our client’s requirements. To cover each major speech would necessitate not only a sound-camera team, but a second ‘wild’ camera and operator to get crowd and reaction shots. Because of the other interviews and commercials required, on some days we’d be providing as many as four, or even five, separate film units. And there would be an intermittent but urgent studio demand; we’d have to book one for the entire period, I realised. We’d need a bench-camera set-up and graphics unit to illustrate the ‘negatives’ on the economy and the decline in sterling, plus a first-rate animator. At least two cutting rooms and editors would be necessary, and we’d need to provide a 24-hour production capacity. It was some bill our new clients were running up. I caught James’s eye: both of us dropped our glance at once.
‘The key to winning this election is the TV campaign,’ said Whitelaw. ‘Ted wants to meet you and take a look at your setup tomorrow.’
Asians and Germans can meet to do business at any hour, and so can most Americans, but in Britain the idea of discussing any matter unaccompanied by food and drink is unthinkable; no event can take place without. In the worlds of commerce, politics and the arts, alimentation is taken for granted.
‘We’ll give him a sight of our production capacity as we take him up through the building,’ James said to me when we were alone. ‘We’ll hold the meeting in the library. Will you arrange things, Jeremy?’
I’d been used to doing so in the past. We entertained groups of clients regularly, often screening a new-release movie in the armchair comfort of our viewing theatre before regaling them with food and drink in the large beamed room which had been the library of the Jesuit seminary in Farm Street that was now our corporate headquarters. But I wanted to make this better than those routine events. Not more elaborate, that would be a mistake, but somehow more memorable.
Garrett’s had won all kinds of prizes for its commercials, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival. But this was of a different order, to obtain the Conservative Party account represented a prestigious accolade. James was a highly successful businessman, he’d built up the company to become the leader in its field, but his talents were greater than the cottage industry he dominated and I wanted to help him gain this crown. We’d known each other a long time; he’d been good to me, moreover I owed him. I’d turned down his offer to run the New York office and lately I had not pulled my weight in the company. I would make up for my dereliction now by doing my very best to help win Garrett’s the account.
Should I get what was required for this meeting at Fortnum’s, I wondered. Unlike the restricted range the store displays today, its delicatessen counter then was unmatched in its spread of treats, some remarkably exotic. But individual Sudanese dried ants encased in chocolate weren’t right for this occasion, I considered, and a hundred-year-old Chinese egg had quite the wrong association in the circumstance. No, simplicity was the key: canapés, a selection of tiny sandwiches, sparkling water, fresh orange juice, an unostentatious though stylish white Burgundy … the catering should be plain but elegant.
At the end of that day I visited Nanny at Gilston Road before going home. I helped her pull out her trunk from beneath the bed and sat chatting to her as she burrowed into its close-packed depths, past the carefully wrapped bundles of postcards my brothers and I had mailed her from school … and those Gino and Mother had sent when they were children, further and deeper than the matchbox containing a cube of her great-niece’s wedding cake … the gala shipboard menu of a Mediterranean cruise I’d sent her on when I’d first started to make money, deeper than my Colt .45 and revolver in their oiled-cloth wrapping … ammunition … detonators … to a bottle of 500 tablets of Methedrine I’d laid down in ’66 just before they’d become unobtainable when Burroughs-Wellcome ceased manufacture.
I’d raided the stock over the years but, as with a rare vintage impossible to replace, I’d plundered it solely for important celebrations. Only a dozen and a half of the 10mg tablets remained, but this was no time to be stingy; it was an occasion for the best. Naturally I did not bother James with precise details of the proposed menu. Quite rightly he would have disapproved and vetoed it.
Our new and much grander offices were built in solid ecclesiastical style, their dignified entrance supported by church pilasters. And, though the intervening floors were raucous with the clatter of cutting rooms, telephones and chronic frenzy of production, the library at the top, whose monastic austerity was softened by cut flowers, paintings and comfortable armchairs, was tranquil and serious. A suitable atmosphere for such a gathering as now.
Ted Heath had a portly presence and a florid, well-fed face. He was not a man one warmed to instantly. His bearing and full, rounded tone came over as a rehearsal, but I was puzzled why an intelligent man should have chosen a manner and accent so alienating to so much of the electorate. He arrived surrounded by a small court: Whitelaw, an aide, and the same pair of pinstripe hounds straining at the leash beside them. After the usual social niceties the group took their seats at the table with tacit understanding of their respective pole positions. My role was fulfilled … but they also serve who only stand and wait. I withdrew to James’s office where the sound of the meeting reached me as a muted hum of conversation …
The minutes passed and I waited nervously, anxious to be sure my carefully prepared delicacies were well received by our distinguished guest. Not that I expected recognition or thanks for the time and trouble I’d put into their preparation – such is not the way of things, I knew. My reward lay in the knowledge of their excellence. The accompanying Chablis, dry and flinty on the palate, was perfectly judged, I thought, and the pinch of Methedrine added to the canapés at the start was an inspired touch; the slight hint of bitterness seemed actually to enhance the rich flavour of the foie gras, introducing a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, hard to define in terms of taste yet magical, historic.
But my anxiety was misplaced. The titbits I’d taken such pains to make exceptional were appreciated by all – indeed it seemed our Leader had been quite peckish that morning and they’d gone down extraordinarily well. As I listened to that initial hum of conversation rise in pitch and volume to the lively babble of a party dominated by the confident boom of Heath’s voice, I relaxed.
And a very good party, I realised with satisfaction. An impression confirmed as the meeting broke up and our guests came to leave, for their mood was quite different to before. People spoke faster, their body language had grown more expressive, their movements more animated. I was, though, a bit worried about our Leader; flecks of spittle showed at the corners of his mouth and he’d turned a rather alarming colour. Doses in the individual treats were low, but I hadn’t reckoned on him being quite so partial to the canapés. Yet he seemed to be feeling fit, indeed all looked to be feeling wonderfully well. The atmosphere – so restrained and formal at the beginning – had warmed into a joyful shared exuberance. No longer strangers, we were comrades in arms, united in the fray. Champagne amphetamine was the perfect choice for such a moment; all were launched on a month-long high which would last until election night. Such was their exalted state, their blood was up and the race was on. Victory lay just before their eyes and all, all was possible …
A Better Tomorrow … The meeting ended in a jovial flush-faced au revoir. Roused and exhilarated, a resolute body of overweight men marched off behind their Leader, their hearts and spirits high, with the pinstripes bounding beside them, muzzles raised and baying for war …
Three weeks into the campaign, with only days to go before the election, bookmakers’ odds had lengthened to 3–1 against the Conservatives. The opinion polls, published in all the national papers, played an unprecedented part in the campaign, revealing Wilson to be personally much more popular than the aloof Heath, who, disdaining his opponent’s walkabouts and impromptu chats in shopping malls, relied on prepared speeches to a mass assembly and daily press conferences.
Nothing the Conservatives threw into the battle made any difference, nothing they or we came up with served to turn the tide. All the polls showed steady and growing support for Labour. In our tactical planning sessions with Whitelaw the mood had degenerated to manic frenzy underlaid by sweaty-faced desperation.
‘Well, what these geezers fucking want, then?’ Terry Donovan asked me as he spun the wheel in his big hand to turn the chocolate brown Rolls-Royce into the King’s Road.
He was one of the film directors who, along with Bryan Forbes and Gordon Reece, had been hired by Garrett’s to direct the footage making up the Party Politicals. A top fashion photographer, he was one of the Cockney snappers who revolutionised photography in the ’sixties (and his later clients would include Margaret Thatcher – whose image he was instrumental in altering – the Duke and Duchess of York and Princess Diana). I had always liked Terry enormously, but this was the first time we’d worked together on a production.
‘Vox populi,’ I said, in answer to Donovan’s question. ‘They want the C2s, Ds and Es to love them, the proles, the masses. They want to hear them repeat the message – the “voice of the common people”.’
Terry said nothing for a while, he was thinking. He spent a lot of time driving slowly around Greater London in his Roller, looking out and thinking. A Buddhist with off-centre views, he once got rid of his possessions and lived in the car.
He said, ‘There’s this bird in East Dulwich, she’s dead common. Talk your fucking ’ead off, too. Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit all day long, got a slant on everything.’
‘Sounds what we need, Terry,’ I agreed.
‘Speed of light,’ he said and, turning the big car out of the King’s Road to cross the river, we headed for south London. I asked how he knew the girl we were on our way to visit.
‘Her old man’s done this an’ that for me … bit of duckin’ and diving, know what I mean?’ he explained.
Terry’s life was characterised by such connections and I knew this was all I was going to get. He didn’t do explanations, he was entirely instinctive in the way he worked – and he was usually right.
He was in this case. Tracy was the epitome of the downmarket consumer whose vote the Conservatives most needed at this critical moment in the last flurry of their, and our, campaign.
She lived in a council estate of post-war modern housing. Yet the development was not dismal and wasted, as often today, but well kept. There were grass and trees, no litter, and no graffiti or signs of vandalism. Modest family saloons stood parked in front of the apartment blocks, far from new but highly polished and clearly lovingly maintained.
Tracy was delighted to see Terry – as everyone always was, for he brought a cheerful ebullience into any room he entered. He had a huge appetite for absurdity and laughter, he was fun. ‘The old man out on the job, then?’ he asked breezily as he surged into her flat with myself following in his large wake.
‘He is an’ all, works ever so hard,’ she said fondly. It was obvious their marriage was a good one.
If a set designer had to construct a film set typifying the flat of a young working-class couple who had worked hard, done well and earned enough by their own industry to make their modern home really well-equipped and comfortable, even luxurious in its G-Plan way, he would have come up with Tracy and her husband’s apartment. The vividly patterned carpet was thick and of good quality, the mirrored cocktail cabinet new and expensive. Their TV set was the largest available, and a later design than we had in the Garrett offices. The couple were model consumers, every available surface was crowded with decorative objects, china and silver. And at least one of them – perhaps both – had taste; some of the pieces were excellent.
Tracy had a vivid, vivacious personality. Aged twenty-six, she was quick-witted and clearly intelligent. With short, dark hair, a pert expressive face and bright eyes, she was very pretty in a wholly ordinary way. No vamp, no threat to other women. Her accent was strong south London, the way she voiced her thoughts uneducated but fluent and forceful; she spoke with conviction. She was exactly what we were looking for. Terry had got it in one.
I used Tracy’s telephone to summon up a camera crew and we filmed her two hours later. Keeping the camera running, Terry covered her in mid-shot and close-up responding to my off-screen questions, which would be edited out in cutting. But Tracy had no need of questions to get her going: she was motor-mouth. She talked without pause – housing … jobs … health care … the social services … the economy … she had views on everything. And they were the right views, the right-wing views our client wanted.
Hardly pausing for breath, she rattled on endlessly. And within that torrent of rabbit pouring from her mouth, precious gems lay embedded. About inflation she said, ‘ … go on any longer at this rate and we’ll be paying for a bleeding ten-bob loaf by Christmas’. On the Conservatives’ policy to restore British military forces to the Middle East she answered, ‘Well we’re not about to let that lot put one over on us, are we? I mean, this country may not be altogether perfect, know what I mean, but it’s a bleeding sight better than anywhere else.’ Her response to my question on race relations – an issue which figured in the campaign as a result of Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech on immigration – though undoubtedly expressing the views of the majority of the electorate at that time, was judged not suitable for inclusion in the final transmission. ‘Send the whole bleeding bunch of them back to Africa, climb back into the bleeding trees,’ she asserted roundly.
Aside from that, her opinions accorded with Tory Party dogma, but principally it was her manner that carried weight, the sincerity with which she expressed her Conservative views. That and what she stood for, their home and its evident prosperity, their enterprise and the good life they’d worked so hard to achieve, the fact she was four months’ pregnant with their first baby … the future, the inspiration and the hope.
Edited and put together, the film would network the following night – and would prove to be strikingly effective. But even as we wrapped up and made ready to leave the flat Terry and I were elated. Both of us knew that in those countless feet of exposed film stock we had it. Pure gold.
Tracy wanted us to stay, have a cup of tea, and meet her husband when he got back from work. We couldn’t unfortunately, though I’d have liked to; he was clearly an enterprising fellow, successful in his job. ‘What exactly does he do?’ I asked her as we were on the way out.
She shot a glance at Terry. ‘Well, he’s a … a real right Jack-the-lad in’t he?’ she said.
Final opinion polls, published next day on the eve of the election, showed Labour’s lead yet further increased. Few, if any, of the Conservative leaders believed they had any prospect of winning, though Heath himself retained a determined positivity.
It had been a crazy month. For those involved in the campaign there’d been little time to sleep. But all of us were sharing a rare level of nervous energy, we were wired. Most of Garrett’s people were socialist by conviction, yet they too were caught up in the race. All were still fired up, but when we got together in the seminary library to watch the election results live, no one was unaware that their efforts had been wasted, entirely useless. The other side was going to win. Dressed up for the ball, we were attending a wake.
A few minutes before midnight results started to come in. The first, Guildford, showed a surprising swing to the Conservatives. On TV the pundits discounted it, this was a traditional Conservative seat. But the second, West Salford – traditionally Labour – reflected the same swing. And so did the next … and as the results streamed in it became evident that the most surprising ballot reversal of the century had taken place. The final results became inevitable, and soon after 2 am Labour accepted defeat.
A fortnight later all who’d worked on the Tories’ media campaign were invited by the new Prime Minister to a party at Ten Downing Street. Wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit and the same striped tie, I cut a conservative figure at the assembly. The living room of the house, which was decorated and furnished with the drab neutrality of a reasonably good hotel, was packed with a tightly wedged herd of undistinguished people, pleased as punch to be there.
I was myself. Along with everyone else I hadn’t expected Heath to win. I had not been smitten by him or Whitelaw; they seemed to me both bland and brazen, there was something spurious about the attitudes they struck and their complacent breeziness. Yet towards the end, when his disciples were losing faith and he stood embattled by misfortune, he had shown such dignity in adversity I had to admit an unwilling admiration. But I remained a bit underwhelmed by the other politicians I’d encountered. Not a whiff of inspiration came from any of them. And these were the elite, the best of them. To be a backbencher, valued only for your obedience, looked a pitiful existence. Badly paid, some of them toiled their entire lives without achieving the rewards of office, the stick-it-on-the-bill delights of a freebie to Barbados or a weekend at the Paris Ritz, the gratification that comes from shovelling the contents of the mini-bar into your briefcase on departure and the satisfied glow of a job well done.
But the campaign had been an extremely interesting experience, I’d enjoyed it immensely. And it was fun to be invited to Number Ten for the valedictory payoff. I wasn’t drinking – hadn’t in fact since the start of the campaign – but I had brought with me a small packet of coke. I’d dipped into it at times over the past month and only a tiny amount remained. I’d determined to give up cocaine, and this seemed the perfect venue for a final blast. It was only appropriate to mark the occasion, for the whole business had gone so very well for everyone concerned. James Garrett had executed a notable account and been paid, the Conservatives had won, Ted Heath became PM, and Whitelaw Lord President. Terry Donovan had not only been congratulated by the Prime Minister for the best Party Political of the campaign – which, some said, had supplied the final chip that won the pot – but had been presented with a set of five new tyres for his Rolls by Tracy’s husband, Jack-the-lad, as a thank-you gift for making his wife famous by putting her on TV.
Everyone had got what they wanted, everyone was happy. Preceding Sir Tim Bell by a full decade into the downstairs lavatory at Number Ten, I set out a long last line, snorted it, and strolled back to join the fun.