It would be easy, and it is tempting, to dislike Gavin Esler. No sweating on
the Central line for him: he arrives at Television Centre by car, his Armani
suit uncreased, his temper unfrayed by the west London traffic.
He greets security staff and researchers by name, pays for the coffees and
inquires solicitously as to my encounter with the aggressive conspiracy
theorists who have set up camp outside the BBC.
In between presenting Newsnight and other broadcasting duties, Clydebank-born
Esler has written his fourth novel, a political thriller called A Scandalous
Man. When I ungritted my teeth, I actually enjoyed it.
The intertwined tales of a disgraced Tory politician from the Thatcher era and
his estranged, new-Labour-supporting son, A Scandalous Man starts
from the premise that the almighty mess that is the West’s relationship with
Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan has its roots in 1979.
This is a fascinating theory, but, to work in fiction, calls for some clunky
exposition and characters who make long, fact-filled speeches. It comes as
no surprise that Esler had two different books in the queue for his
attention and wrote A Scandalous Man when he realised that the two
could, in fact, become one.
“I had in my mind to write a nonfiction book about 1979,” he says. “It was
such an important year and it’s really underplayed. It’s like 1914, a year
in which the events which are unleashed are going to be with us for 50 or 75
years.
“The bullets shot in 1914 obviously brought about the first world war, the
second world war, the Russian revolution, and the cold war. Not in a linear
fashion, but they all followed from that one event.
I think the failure to know what to do about Iran has plunged us into this
awful difficult territory that we haven’t really figured out.
“There have been three wars in the Gulf since then, the invasion of
Afghanistan and now, last week, we’ve got the Iranians firing test
missiles.” He swerves into Newsnight mode. “Of course they’re not test
missiles, it’s just ludicrous. They’re not testing anything.”
It was the Soviet tanks rolling into Kabul that, in the Esler scheme of
things, were as influential as the shots that killed Archduke Franz
Ferdinand. “The invasion of Afghanistan inadvertently brought about the end
of the cold war, but also the current mess in Afghanistan.
“It was the discrediting of Jimmy Carter over the Iranian hostage crisis that
brought about Reagan and, as I make one of the characters in the book say,
if we hadn’t had Ronald Reagan we would not have had George Bush Sr, and if
we didn’t have George Bush Sr we wouldn’t have George W Bush. It’s just a
bit of a game, but it is true. That was also the year Mrs Thatcher came to
power, so domestically it was also huge.
“The other starting-off point is that I wanted to write a father-son story —
and I should preface this by saying this is nothing remotely
autobiographical, there’s no dirty laundry about my dad, who I love dearly —
about a son who was severely disappointed with his father and didn’t really
know him and for some reason had very little contact and then one day he
finds his father is clinging to life.
“That was the initial idea of this novel, and I suddenly realised I could
combine the two.” He laughs. “I also had the delusion that it was more
likely that people would buy a novel about the events of 1979 and the
consequences than if I wrote a nonfiction book which would be very worthy
and which everybody would say was fine but nobody would read.”
The Scandalous Man of the title is Robin Burnett, an ambitious right-wing
economist bewitched by Thatcher’s monetarist impulses and rarely seen
feminine side. He loses his job when the tabloids uncover his affair with a
PhD student/lingerie model, but the real scandal is his secret role as
America’s go-between, helping the nascent neocons arm the Iranians and the
Iraqis to keep fighting a war neither can win.
Burnett is not — Esler effortlessly heads off this obvious question at the
pass — based on Jeffrey Archer or Cecil Parkinson or any of the other
politicians of the era whose careers crashed on the rocks of sleaze.
“There was no one person in my head. There are quite a lot of people who are
in politics who just become much better people and more human when they
cease to be ambitious and that’s what I wanted to say.
“I know quite a few people from that period — politicians, people who were in
government in various ways, civil servants connected with the defence and
intelligence community here and in the US — so I didn’t have to research
that too much. I did reread the Alan Clark diaries, which was a joy. I also
looked at the Scott report [the 1992 judicial inquiry into British arms
sales to Iraq], which wasn’t so much fun but reminded me of some of the
things we were up to.”
Esler also uses the Burnett character to make another point that he holds
dear: that the West was looking elsewhere when Saddam Hussein revealed his
hand by using poison gas against the Kurdish population of northern Iraq.
“I remember I was in this building with a veteran foreign correspondent having
lunch,” says Esler, pointing to the inner sanctum of Television Centre. “The
news came out that Saddam Hussein had used gas, the first of the incidents.
And this correspondent said: ‘We will regret not being outraged about this.’
There was protest, but it was kind of muted. He was right.
“I read the Scott report and the intelligence services and diplomats knew what
was going on. It’s difficult to know exactly what we should have done — this
book is not about advocating any policy. But thousands and thousands of
people, including 10- and 12-year-old kids, were dying on the battlefield
and there was no sense of outrage. I think we still live with that. And Iran
and Iraq feel we are somehow culpable because we were supplying both sides.”
If this gives the impression Esler is a left- wing troublemaker with a storm
cloud of rage above his head, nothing could be further from the truth. His
is a journalistic zeal. He could not present Newsnight without being
forensically well-informed about everything from NHS reform to knife crime,
but his opinions are kept to himself.
His private life is just that. We know about his colleague Jeremy Paxman’s
pants and Kirsty Wark’s support for Maggie’s Centres, but Esler’s underwear
and charitable donations remain a mystery. He broke this rule last year when
his daughter Charlotte, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age
of 14, took part in a week of BBC programmes about cancer. She had just been
given the all-clear when Esler was approached to present some of the
reports.
“I said no, absolutely not. Then I talked to Charlotte about it and she said:
‘Well, you’re an idiot. You’ve admitted you were very ignorant.’ ” Esler
claims he did not know the difference between lymphoma and leukemia. But
then he laid down a challenge to his daughter. “I said: ‘Well, if you’re so
smart, why don’t you do it?’ And she said: ‘Well I would.’ It was almost a
dare.
“I suggested this in here and they thought this was a much better idea than me
doing it and I was immediately dumped in favour of Charlotte.”
Her report looked at the specific issues facing teenagers with cancer and is
now being used by the Teenage Cancer Trust to guide parents. “I know it’s
father’s pride, but I thought she was really good. I also think it helped
her, it was a milestone, it was a point at which she said: it’s an end.
“Lymphoma, 50 years ago, was a death sentence. Now in most cases it’s curable.
And curable for ever. You listen to Charlotte's piece and think: ‘It’s a
terrible thing, but it is survivable.’
“I can’t tell you the feeling of walking in to a hospital and seeing ‘teenage
cancer unit’. Your heart just sinks. You go through all the things that
parents go through: I wish it was me, I’d take it for you, why is it you and
not me? It all goes through your head. It didn’t go through Charlotte’s
head. She had zero self-pity, she just got on with it, which made me really
proud.”
Charlotte, who is now 16, still has three-monthly tests. The chances that the
disease will recur is just 5%. She seems, says Esler, “absolutely fine” and
has the typical teenager’s disdain for her father’s occupation. There is no
three-line whip to watch Newsnight in the Esler household. “They’d far
rather watch Family Guy or The Simpsons.” He laughs. “As indeed would many
people.”
“The only time I achieved any degree of credibility with my children was when
I appeared on Little Britain. I could interview the prime minister and the
president of the United States every night for the next two years and they
would not be remotely interested, but when I appeared with David Walliams
and Matt Lucas, that was the ultimate.”
Gavin Esler appears at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August
12
what a dull piece of writing about a fascinating man
B White, Edinburgh,