Bliss It Was That I Was Born A Tory

It often happens that I’m suddenly aware of journalists who write book reviews. ‘Damn!’ I cry. ‘What are those journalists doing out there, Mary? What’s with all their telephoto lenses while an innocent man sits in his bathtub debating plot twists with his collection of rubber ducks? Is this what’s become of serious literary criticism? Damn their eyes! Jolly well damn them all!’

About the same time, I will often reflect on the nature of journalism and how a man asked to review the book of a friend will allow that friendship to cloud the proper critical debate. Well, I’m jolly well not that sort of man. As you know, I do my utmost of never talk about or mention my friends. You would think that I’m a person who travels the world alone, without associates or comrades to name. As I told my dear old friend, Sir John Major, just the other day: it’s better to be humble than display your popularity for all the world to see. John agreed and was making a similar point to Mary but unfortunately I was dragged to the other side of the party by Michael Howard who wanted me to distract Michael Ancram while the sandwiches were being arranged on the buffet table. I do love darling Michael but he’s a real bugger when it comes to pickle on white bread.

The party was to mark the official opening of ‘Bliss it was that I was born a Tory’, an exhibition of some nineteen examples of the best of British Tories from 1950 to 1990, over at St James's. It has already become a huge success and many have described it as the finest exhibition of early Tories since Willie Whitelaw was feted with fireworks in 1993. With so many great Tory figures on show, there is something even the most demanding fan of conservative ideals. My favourite was a remarkable example of juvenilia of the 1980s in the form of a early William Hague, although it was worth the trip alone to see this later example of his post-acne-scarred schooldays.

The Unsung Capital

Berlin jolly well surprised the heck out of me! And I don’t just mean the transvestites that prop up every bar in the city. For a metropolis with a population of only 3.5m (1.2m of which cross-dress for a living) they have a remarkable work ethic. In a short space of time they have transformed the city, which no longer looks divided, except across gender lines which are as fuzzy as hell. The Wall is now gone, except for a small section which I did my best to demolish. I’m delighted to report that my good friend Angela Merkel has agreed to have a plaque placed up on the spot where ‘Jefrey Archer Demolished The Berlin Wall’. Mary took photographs as I cried ‘Take that, Soviet Union!’ and trod the last of the rubble into the ground as I once helped Margaret put the last the of the British coal industry under our her high heels.

The biggest shock about my holiday in Berlin was the number of art galleries I found on my travels. If you’re in the market for large hipped nymphs splashing around watering holes, then Berlin in the city for you – just be sure that they are nymphs and not some nymph substitutes with sketchy hormones. Did I mention that not all is as it appears in Berlin? I met this young lady smoking a pipe who turned out to be one meat and two vegetables more than she appeared.

Anyway, it was wonderful to see the work of my old friends, Rembrandt, Giotto, and Bellini all on show. I told Mary that we must ask them to dinner in the near future. Mary just gave me a funny look. I didn’t want to make a scene so I left it at that as my guide, Professor Gruber, told me that art is central to the German psychology. I replied that I thought it was third in the list after militarism and a slight tendency towards fascism. What was obvious, though, is that they jolly well know how to hang a canvas. In each of the gallery spaces, I was left alone to examine the paintings. Thankfully, I had managed to persuade the gallery owners to kick out the paying public for my visit. I told them I was a close personal friend of Angela Merkel and threatened to cut off their funding. Amazing what a little bit of name dropping can do. As I told the President of Germany, Horst Köhler, later that day.

After seeing all the art, we were then off to Potsdam where I saw the room where Truman, Churchill and Stalin held their famous meeting. I sat on the chair once filled by Stalin’s ample rear. I was so inspired that I began to develop my own political system which I intended to impose on millions of people across Europe. Unfortunately, Mary spotted what I was up to and ripped up my plan before it reached novel length. Another time, perhaps.

Can I mention the wonderful Chinese Tea Pavillion? It’s in the middle of the garden and the sight of which would be forever alive in the memories of any of the visitors to whom it was then visible... (Damn it, Archer, the prose is flowing like quality vino today!)

Speaking of wine, the food in Berlin was without equal, served by waitresses dressed in traditional costumes. They all smoked pipes and wore beards which led me to suspect that they were more of those cross dresser types that have had me so worried these past five days. Still, they had jolly good pins on them and I told them so later on over pints of Bavarian ale.

All told, it was a jolly good adventure. The German people were all warm, except those that weren’t. They were all polite, except those that were rude. I had to give a few of them a jolly good telling off, explaining the concept of manners to them. Professor Gruber told me that they tended to be from East Berlin and will have suffered years of privation and suffering at the hands of the Soviets. ‘That’s no excuse,’ I replied. ‘I was in the Tory Government for donkey’s years and I still know how to say “please” and “thank you”.’ I think he took my point, which jolly well should have.

Mary sends her love.

Bankers

Berlin’s a jolly city, don’t get me wrong, but, as Willie Whitelaw once observed, it is let down by an abundance of Germans.

Personally, I don’t mind their rather leaden language, with its rampant use of the letter ‘f’ which has always been Mary’s least favourite member of the alphabet (I’m rather partial to ‘P’ myself), but I do dislike their manners which are, quite frankly, appalling and remind me of many an electoral campaign kicking shins with the people of Lincolnshire when I was a fresh faced Conservative candidate newly down from Oxford. It felt like I was back on the campaign trail this morning as I elbowed my way to the front of an English language bookshop. I was explaining to the rather ignorant queue that mine is the language of Shakespeare and they should jolly well get out of my way when somebody unceremoniously poked me in the groin with an imported Jilly Cooper. I gave the woman such a look of contempt, I believe she recognised me immediately. And I should say that she should recognise me! My books have always been popular here in Germany where my novels are often mentioned as being similar to those of the mature Goethe but with better punctuation.

It might not sound it but the view from Germany is surprising calm today. I had dinner with Angela Merkel last night and told her to keep a firm fiscal policy. I do like Angela but she can a bit of a Doubting Thomas. I suppose you’ve also been watching the current crisis in the world’s markets with growing concern. While we wait for America to show us the way, they tie themselves up in knots. It reminds me of the eighties when Ronald Regan would often ring Margaret late at night and she would hand me the phone and ask me to put him straight. I told him to treat the Russians like Margaret treated the miners and I’d say the same now if Gordon Brown buzzed me on my mobile. The government should jolly well do to these fat cat bankers what we did to Arthur Scargill and his thugs. Send a few bobbies to crack their skulls together and this whole foolish mess will be sorted in a weekend.

We’re off to the Deutsche Oper Berlin tonight, where I’ll be attending the first performance of an opera based around my prison diaries. I’m sure everybody will do a splendid job, though I expect the critics to give it a bashing. They did the same to Wagner when he was new and promising, and look where that ended: two world wars, a divided Europe, and the Russians owning half of Kensington. You would think they would jolly well learn their lesson!

Mary sends her love.

Greetings From Berlin

Hello chaps. I’m here in wet, wet Berlin where I’ve been seeing all the wonderful sights in the company of my old friend Professor Fritz Gruber, who Tim Rice introduced me to on holiday in Portugal last year when I was researching donkey executions for my next book, ‘Donkey Death: A Story of Family’. Professor Gruber has been a fantastic host, despite Mary and I turning up unannounced on his doorstep and demanding lodgings. But isn’t that the Teutonic spirit? Always happy to accommodate unexpected guests when they arrive with packed suitcases and an abundance of talent.

Gruber has been happy to show us around the hidden Berlin and I’ve been having a jolly old time touring the pubs, learning about the twenty seven types of beer on offer and thirty two different forms of transvestism on show. Did you know that Germans have a different name for transvestites with beards and transvestites with moustaches? The former are called Fzumunselleckschmit and the latter Ftzisterikeralfraucamel, and I will be making this distinction into a clever plot twist in my next novel, which is about two German banker brothers whose passion for wearing women’s nylons brings them together while investigating a string of ritualistic donkey massacres across the Iberian Peninsula.

Among Berlin’s many unsung and unknown treasure, the midget choir is perhaps the most surprising and brought me to my knees in the shadow of the Reichstag. There, I listened to three dozen little Berliners singing Bach an octave higher than my own perfectly manly high C. Mary suggested that I joined in and when a few tourists gave me encouragement, I made my way to the front of the crowd, got down on my pads and sang the lead with the best midget choir in Germany. The choir master spotted that I had perfect pitch, though I knew that already, and he said that he thought I’d done justice to St. Matthew’s Passion. Then the midgets made me an honorary member of their choir, which delighted me enormously and Mary took photographs as I bounced each of the little fellows on my knee and autographed their rather large foreheads in marker pen.

Tomorrow we are off to see the biggest fudge workshop in Bavaria, on which I’ll report later and may well give you my own butterscotch recipe which the Archbishop of Canterbury once told me was the best he’d ever tasted and made him once again believe there is indeed a God and he’s published by PanMacmillan.

Mary sends her love.