Material Witness

Is Spooks dictating new US intelligence on Iran? And Richard and Judy's depressing best books list

Reading various reports looking at how new US intelligence suggests that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, I was struck by the similarities between this ongoing geopolitical soap opera and recent episodes of the BBC's flagship drama serial Spooks.

If you haven't been watching, recent episodes have focused on the world's most sylish counter-intelligence department trying to stop dastardly Iranian diplomats and spies from obtaining nuclear triggers and then, when foiled in this quest, pulling a peace treaty with Tehran out of thin air.

Just such a downgrading of hostile relations with Iran may be on the cards now following the report, which may lead those of us with cynical and conspiratorial inclinations to wonder if in some  small way life isn't imitating art.

I doubt it as my Mulder days are behind me.

But Spooks has been  particularly compelling this season as it appears to have abandoned last series approach of running a succession of loosely-linked standalone episodes in favour of a serial dominated by a single theme: the looming Persian threat.

Even if it is all nonsense - and good lord let's hope so, or we'll all be blown sky high sooner rather than later - the new approach has made Spooks even more watchable and enjoyable.

No adult fiction on Richard and Judy's Christmas book choices

There's not too much that's more depressing than wondering into a book shop and seeing people poring over tables of "celebrity" biogs, miscellany books and other assorted crap. It makes me want to lead people to the fiction, history  and other sections and shout loudly at them. But as I'm a non-confrontational sort I simply seethe quietly about the decline of civilisation and then worry about my blood pressure.

Sure, buying Steve Wright's Further Factoids might solve the problem of what to buy Uncle Stanley for Christmas this year, but it achieves little else. Most of the books on display in major stores confirm my theory that television has left us with a collective national attention span of 4.7 minutes.

So it was with particular disappointment that I saw the reports of the books being recommended this year by the nation's literary guardians, Richard and Judy of afternoon television fame.

Having initially been scathing of the idea that Richard and Judy could dictate the UK's reading habits, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that anything that makes people read more is probably a good thing, even if their power to make or break has become so formidable.

But this year's Chrimbo special will advocate readers buy books in the following four categories: Celebrity Autobiography, Cookery, Coffee Table, Stocking Filler. So it's Russell Brand, Jamie Oliver and Al Murray rather than, say, Zadie Smith, Ian Rankin or Antony Beevor. Heaven help us all.

As an ineffectual antidote to this lowering of tone, standards and IQ, Material Witness will present its Christmas reads later this week. I'm not going to give away too much now, but suffice to say, Jeremy Clarkson will not be on the list.    

Diana: Will she never be left to rest in peace?

Our long national nightmare continues. For the second day in succession, the final hours of Diana, Princess of Wales are splashed all over the front pages of our "news"papers, while the inside pages are stuffed to bloating with inane, irrelevant details of what she might or might not have been doing before her untimely death in Paris.

At the considerable risk of propagating this execrable media ghost-chase, I can't let this pass without comment. What is happening in the media here at present is nothing more or less than the prostitution of the memory of a woman long-dead in a desperate chase for profit. While her relatives are forced to endure the ludicrous, voyeuristic inquest into her death - which looks from the outside like a cross between the OJ Simpson trial and a particularly conspiratorial episode of the X Files - newspapers and 24 hour broadcasters slaver over every last detail like vultures circling the last wildebeest on the plain.

It is a spectacle that debases us all.

Tony Blair, Nicole Kidman and the unfavourable comparison

In a pretty eccentric career that has also taken in a spell as a sports correspondent, a customer sales consultant and a parcels courier in the Thames Valley, I once worked for the Labour Party.

During that time - roughly 1996 to 1999 - I did a lot of interesting things, including stuffing envelopes, cold-calling angry, disinterested voters and being on hand at the Royal Festival Hall on the morning of May 2 1997 to hear Tony Blair say: "A new dawn has broken, has it not?" (Or something very similar. I was both exhausted and drunk; tired and emotional, you might say.)

And during that time I was fortunate (if that's the right word) to meet Tony Blair on a very small handful of occasions, and as he takes his leave of office today it seemed a good moment to recall them. I was a long way down the food chain at the Party, an organiser rather than an adviser, and pretty far removed from the corridors of power, so this is not an "I made him what he is today" story. But I do have one small insight and one revealing anecdote.

On all but one of the occasions I met him, and I can think of four times it happened, I was involved in some fairly low level activity or other - handing out leaflets or acting as a steward at an event. And what I would say about that was that at every occasion, Blair (and Cherie for that matter) would always take the time and stop and say "thanks" and ask how you were or whatever. One view, the cynical one I guess, of this is that Blair was a consumate politician and therefore doing that was like second nature to him - an automated response to a situation.

I'm not often one to dismiss the cynical view in favour of something that takes a somewhat more optimistic view of human behaviour, but in this instance I really think the Blairs were genuine. That they were genuinely grateful to people for mucking in and doing their bit, and understood that in their limited way they were contributing to the "project". Whether that humility and feet-firmly-on-the-ground attitude survived very long after they reached number 10, I have no idea. Living in that sort of rarified atmosphere must make staying "normal" (whatever the hell that means) bloody difficult.

Anyway, enough of that. The anecdote. One early Friday morning - I think it must have been sometime in 1998 - I helped a senior colleague organise a visit for Blair, by now the Prime Minister, to a disability forum in Hounslow Town Hall where he was due to make a speech about some aspect of health and disability policy that I have long forgotten.

I ended up in a little ante-room with Blair, my colleague Hilary Perrin and a handful of his advisors including Anji Hunter, his then gatekeeper, and Alastair Campbell (the only time I recall coming into direct contact with him). My job was to mike the PM up for his speech.

We were in there for about 15 minutes before the whole circus started and the atmosphere was very relaxed and got a little bawdy when Blair, who was clearly in a great mood and at his charming best that day, prompted Anji Hunter to tell us what  they'd been doing that morning, and specifically what she had seen.

She obliged, explaining that they had apparently been at an anti-racism event at Chelsea Football Club's training ground and that during the course of this she had been in the changing room and had seen Gianluca Vialli's backside. Form the noises and gestures she made, I gathered she had enjoyed it.

This occasioned much hilarity, including from Blair, which in turn prompted Hunter to say, and I paraphrase: "Ha! You may laugh, but tell them what you did last night." And so he did.

Blair, and Mrs Blair, had been at the Donmar Warehouse, watching the now famous Blue Room starring Nicole Kidman.

"Did she really get her kit off?" someone (not me, I was too starstruck to actually talk) blurted out.

"Oh yeah," he said, with the now famous grin emerging. "But unfortunately her co-star spent a lot longer naked than she did. And I have to say, Cherie made some very unfavourable comparisons."

I loved him for that. And overall I think he did more good than harm (an assessment horribly skewed by the mess in Iraq) and I think, like many things, people will probably appreciate him more once he's gone. But now is the right time to go.

On sneakers, loners and the polluted Laguna

April 18

A couple of weeks ago I presented a bit of a problem I was facing in the office, from where a pair of Nike sneakers had gone missing at roughly the same time as an identical pair turned up on the feet of our cleaner.

I would like to thank all those who offered comments and advice, even those that were either a direct piss-take, or totally unhelpful. I did not in the end decide to challenge the cleaner to a race down the corridor to determine the ownership status of the shoes, entertaining though that might have been; nor did I think it a good idea to try the Cinderella test with the shoes.

Something I have learned from this whole business is that if I need advice on a "dilly of a pickle" as one correspondent put it, paraphrasing the great Ned Flanders, I am better off turning to total strangers on the internet than friends and family.

The quality of advice and general level of helpfulness received from people I share nothing more with than a deranged loyalty to a sports team - such as that here in this thread on Patsfans.com - was higher than people I have shared a house, office, school or college with.

The dilemma also found its way into the FT, courtesy of business agony aunt and star columnist Lucy Kellaway. Lucy published her advice in the newspaper this morning, and very good it is too. Unfortunately her advice is not available online, but the advice of her correspondents is.

Some of the comments and advice I received in return helped to clarify some of the issues in my mind, other pieces raised some interesting thoughts that hadn't crossed my mind at all.

Ultimately  I have chosen to take the one course of action I originally described as not an option: Do nothing. And the reason for this is that I have no evidence whatsoever that the cleaner took the shoes, although I am 99 per cent sure he did. And if he did, I don't know the circumstances - perhaps I did leave them by my bin. I do not want to take the risk of the guy getting fired if there is even the slightest doubt in my mind.

Lucy Kellaway puts it best: "Do nothing at all.  This is the best  option, though the problem  then becomes what to do with  your nasty, lurking suspicion. I suggest you simply squash it and let your inner liberal (who doesn't want to get the guy in trouble) have free rein."

I never leave my iPod or laptop here, although the RM Williams boots that caused me to buy the comfortable sneakers in the first place are still under the desk, from where I'm hoping somebody relieves me of them.

Disturbed loners

It seemed sadly inevitable that on about day two of the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, the murderer would be labelled a "loner". And so it comes to pass. Only loners, it seems, commit such crimes. Perhaps in the overwhelming numbers of cases, they do. But whenever I hear that phrase rolled out, I suspect it heralds a review of events that allows us to come to the comforting conclusion that there is nothing wrong with society at large, it is merely the work of a deranged individual. And consequently no action is taken.

I love Donna Leon

There are few writers who can get away with writing a crime novel in which there is no apparent crime until the 170th page of a 330 page book. But Donna Leon succeeds magnificently in Through a Glass Darkly, her most recent release in paperback.

Her detective, the wonderfully unhurried Commissario Guido Brunetti, gets round to nothing much of anything in the opening chapters of this book, but it is of no consequence. What we get is a guided tour of Venice in spring, an introduction to the inner workings of the "fornaces", the famous glass-making factories of Murano as well as the usual gastronomic tour de force from Brunetti's wife, Paola.

It is charming, delightful stuff, as smooth as a good Brunello and every bit as enjoyable. Eventually Leon tuns the heat up and we are presented with a superb tale of greed, corruption and tragedy which foretells of an ecological catastrophe for Venice and its Laguna and builds beautifully to its uniquely Italian crescendo.

If you haven't tried Donna Leon before, give her a go. I cannot recommend her books highly enough.

   

The Ipswich Murders

December 13, 11.40am

One of the side effects of reading a lot of crime fiction is the potential for it to leave one anaesthetised to the horrors of the crimes being described. Regrettably this spills over all too easily into "real" life and crime and it has become relatively straightforward - for me at least - to whip through reports without spending too much time thinking about the victims.

But when coverage of an event becomes blanket, leading every bulletin, occupying every front page, we are brought face to face with the full horror of what a violent crime means for a victim, a family, even an entire community - in this case Ipswich.

It is all but impossible to read or watch any of it, without straying into uncomfortable territory thinking about just how terrifying and lonely it must be in such a gruesome scenario. The other thing that has struck me over the last couple of days in particular, is just how desperate and difficult lives must be for women still prepared to work the streets of Ipswich under such circumstances. I am now waiting for the media to turn its attention on how society can help to ensure that, wherever possible, women are not forced into the street life, and where impossible, to keep them safe.

But it is also very difficult not to think of these murders in the context of crime fiction.

"It's all very Rebus, isn't it?" my wife asked. And it is a little.

The speed at which events have unfolded in Suffolk, with five  victims in less than a fortnight,  gives this awful story the pace of fiction. Every time I hear a report I wonder what the police are not revealing about the victims, whether this killer leaves his own mark in some way. There seems to be a lot we are not being informed about, and I hope that means there are plenty of leads and that no more lives are lost.

Truth stranger than fiction again

April 10, 9.47am

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to interview Carl Hiaasen for the Financial Times. One of the most memorable elements of a long and winding discussion was his concern that one of the biggest dangers for writers of his ilk was however absurd and fantastical his plots, however grotesque his characters, they would always be trumped by reality.

I remembered this conversation this morning when I was woken by the radio at 6am with the alarming news that George W Bush might consider it his "messianic" mission to implement regime change in Iran, possibly using tactical nuclear strikes. Does he not have enough on his plate next door? Who is giving this man advice?

Truth might well be stranger than fiction, but I have to say, when that's the first item on the news agenda, I'll stick with fiction, it's a good deal less scary.

Started the new JLB this morning. Forty pages in, I'm already hooked. As with Crusader's Cross, Dave Robicheaux is delving into his troubled, drink-ridden past. Will post a full review when through.

More later

Reading

Cross Bones (p198)

Pegasus Descending (p47)