Rosebud Special - Jeffrey Archer At The Leicester Square Theatre

Last Sunday - the day before he died - Jeffrey Archer was on stage at the Leicester Square Theatre in London celebrating the publication of his fiftieth book - his final novel, Adam and Eve - and talking with Gyles about his remarkable roller-coaster life. Jeffrey was in great form, telling stories even Gyles hadn’t heard before. This isn’t a regular Rosebud, but it was such a fun show, we wanted to share it with you. It’s poignant, too, because, as you will hear (and can see if you watch our interview episodes on the Rosebud Podcast channel on YouTube), at the end of the performance Jeffrey recites Puck’s farewell speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ’So goodnight unto you all …' Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare. Born 15 April 1940. Died 5 October 2026. Author, politician, MP, member of the House of Lords, served two years in prison for perjury, 2001-2003. Married to Mary Archer since 1966. Both Jeffrey Archer and Dame Mary Archer have featured in regular episodes of Rosebud, now available in the Rosebud archive. The recording of this special episode has been made possible by Harper-Collins, publishers of Jeffrey Archer’s final novel, Adam and Eve, which was published yesterday. Our thanks to Elizabeth Dawson and the Harper-Collins team for all their help. Our thanks, too, to the Leicester Square Theatre where the recording was made on Sunday 4 October 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing, whoever you are, I really hope you enjoy this episode of Rosebud. I'm Giles Brandreth, and here we are. Cue the music. Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth, and this is the Rosebud Podcast, except it's a bit

• 2:05Speaker 03

  different from our usual episodes. This is an extra episode, a special episode, featuring a friend of mine who died this week, Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer of Weston Supermaire. Jeffrey Archer, one of the most successful novelists of our time, whose own life story sometimes seemed stranger than fiction. Born on the 15th of April 1940, he died on the 5th of October 2026. That's Monday of this week. On Sunday of this week, Geoffrey and I were onstage together at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, celebrating his

• 2:45Speaker 03

  50th book and his final novel, Adam and Eve, and talking about his remarkable life. We had a good time together. It was a fun show. And after it, in the dressing room, my wife said to Geoffrey, "You've never been better." And I think Geoffrey rather agreed. It went so well, and it felt a bit different. We'd had onstage chats before, but this time Geoffrey seemed a bit more relaxed, more at ease with himself, more amusingly self-deprecating. And he told stories I'd never heard him tell before. Wait till you get to Jeffrey Archer and Mother Teresa. And before we began, Geoffrey said this

• 3:26Speaker 03

  to me. He said, "I'd like to do something a bit different at the end of the show. When we are finished," he said, "I want to get up on my own, and in the middle of the stage, I want to say thank you to the audience, to thank them for keeping me going behind all my books over the last 50 years." And then, he said, "I want to recite a bit of Shakespeare." I said, "Oh, Geoffrey, a bit of Shakespeare?" He said, "Yes." "I want to recite a little bit from A Midsummer Night's Dream, the end of the play, where Puck gives a speech that begins, 'If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.'"

• 4:07Speaker 03

  And he recited the whole speech to me. And he said, "What do you think? I want to do that, and I just want to leave the stage on my own. Is that okay?" I said, "Of course it's okay." And that's what he did. And Puck's farewell turned out to be Geoffrey's farewell. And you can listen to it now, or watch it on YouTube at the Rosebud Podcast channel. Geoffrey did a regular Rosebud a while ago, you know, the normal one that begins what is your very first memory and took him right through his childhood. It was an interesting episode because he talked about both his parents. He never liked talking about his

• 4:48Speaker 03

  father. He was in denial about his father. But anyway, that's available on the Rosebud Archive if you want to listen to that. That's the full traditional Rosebud. And his wife of 60 years, Dr. Dame Mary Archer, we've had her as a Rosebud guest as well. And that's equally fascinating in a quite different way. She is a fascinating and remarkable woman. And I think that is an episode of Rosebud you really will find intriguing. So this, what you're about to see and hear, isn't a traditional episode of Rosebud, and nor is it a critical review of Geoffrey's life. Certainly, it's not about his life in politics or about the libel trial that he won on the basis of a lie that eventually landed him

• 5:33Speaker 03

  in prison, and incidentally led to three of his best books, in my view, his prison diaries. Now, this is a celebration of Geoffrey's latest novel, his last novel, of course, Adam and Eve. And it's really simply two old friends in conversation. After the show in the dressing room, Geoffrey and I, we hugged, and he went off to sign some books for fans, and I went home. And that was Sunday night, Sunday night of this week. By Monday afternoon, Geoffrey was dead. He'd taken a nap after a morning of writing, and he didn't wake up. And I suppose if you have got to die, and we all have to die, perhaps

• 6:15Speaker 03

  there couldn't be a better way to go, you know, in your sleep, after 86 years of a life lived to the full, on the very eve of the publication of your latest and last bestseller. Because Geoffrey did this show on Sunday, he died on Monday, and on Tuesday, his last book, Adam and Eve, was published, and it's now destined to become a number one bestseller. I don't know if he had any premonition on Sunday night that that would be his last performance, but when you hear him recite that Shakespeare speech at the end of the show, "So good night unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends,

• 6:59Speaker 03

  and Robin shall restore amends," I think you will wonder. Anyway, you can read plenty about the worst of Geoffrey in the papers this week. I was looking through some of them today, and they are certainly retelling all the stories of the ups and downs of his incredible career. But this Rosebud special is simply giving you the best of him, and I very much hope you enjoy it. So here is Jeffrey Archer at the Leicester Square Theatre this Sunday. Cue the music.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  I want to talk a little bit about Adam and Eve first, and then I want to take your story right back to the beginning and just, I want to discover why you are where you are now by going right back to the beginning and hearing about the journey and the roots of Jeffrey Archer. But is it true that somebody who is a friend of both of us recently said in public that she had been caught on the Underground crying? And she was asked why? And she said, well, what did she say?

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Yes, she was on Ayesha Hasakari, was on an Underground, reading Adam and Eve. And a lady came up and said, "Is anything wrong?" She said, "Yes. It's brought me to tears." And she rang me again this morning to say she'd finished. And she very kindly said, and she's saying it on air this morning, "In her opinion, it's a masterpiece and the best thing I've ever done."

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Hey, well, well done you!

• 8:52Speaker 04

  No, you know, it's funny you say that. In the end, it's the people who decide. You can have two weeks of the most amazing publicity. You can have great people saying it's a masterpiece. But if you survive for 50 years, it's because the word of mouth, that is far more important than any advertisement, than any publicity. It's real people telling other real people.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Why is this, do you think, as good as anything you've ever done? Why is this book important to you?

• 9:36Speaker 04

  I got the idea six years ago, or at least I got half of the idea six years ago. I was reading a history book by the great Leo Mackinsky, and he had written that on September the 15th, 1940, Hitler changed his mind three times. So I went home and thought, what would have happened if he changed his mind twice? And he had invaded the British Isles. And I put that up in one corner, because I couldn't see what to do with it. And then

• 10:19Speaker 04

  I had the idea that an Earl, desperate to have a son, so he could inherit the estate and, more important, the title, and a shepherd on the same estate, desperate to have a daughter because he feared any son would end up going to war, and the exact opposite happens. The Earl has a daughter, and the shepherd has a son, Adam and Eve. And how do I...

• 10:59Speaker 03

  That's the problem. I've now got two problems. How do I get Adam and Eve to be responsible for Hitler changing his mind the third time?

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Now, I'm very aware that if it's, "Oh God, I could see that a mile off, Jeff." "Yeah, plonked it right in the middle, didn't you?" You have to write it so that the reader goes along with it. And people say at the end, "Could it possibly have happened?"

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Before you write the first word, you know what the destination will be, but do you know the route of the journey?

• 11:48Speaker 03

  No. I'm lucky if I know the next page. I know there are these two kids gonna be born on the same day, if I may.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  I know these two children are going to be born on the same day, so I'll just read you that. "He was dreaming when there was a knock on the door. Bill Turner turned over and hurried..." Sorry, I haven't got my glasses. "...and buried his head in the pillow." Have I got glasses on me?

• 12:24Speaker 04

  I don't need glasses.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Read the first paragraph.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  The 11th of November, 1918. It's a significant date as well.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  The last day of the First World War.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  "He was dreaming when there was a knock on the door. Bill Turner turned over and buried his head in the pillow, still hoping it was a dream, but the knocking ignored his wishes. If anything, it was louder and more persistent. He reluctantly opened his eyes and blinked at the bedside clock. Eleven minutes passed four. One of the pedals of being a family doctor, he rested for a moment, but when he looked again, the clock had moved on to 4:12, as if in agreement with whoever was knocking. The doctor slowly pushed himself up, pulled back the covers and placed his feet gingerly on the carpet. He put on his dressing gown and slippers, padded across to the window and looked down to see the Earl's butler staring up at him." You can leave now, because we're enjoying this.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  Who's done the audiobook? Why didn't you ask me this time? I remember Martin Jarvis used to do a lot of your books. Have you done the audiobook for this?

• 13:42Speaker 04

  You see, the answer to your question is that... So I've now got the doctor.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  I've now got him rushing off

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  for the birth of the daughter. He then comes home, and he's called out a second time that morning for the birth of the son. So you've got the two children born on the same day. But I want to answer your question. I didn't know where I was going after that.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  The pen then goes on.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  And is it a pen, or is it...

• 14:18Speaker 04

  A felt-tip pen. Yeah, yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Do you still write on those big yellow...

• 14:23Speaker 04

  You're terribly clever and you're so much younger.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Ah, well now, my eyesight certainly is.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  But you've always written with a pen.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can't turn on a computer, let alone use it. So I always handwrite everything, and then it's given back to me typed, triple-spaced, and I work with a pencil then. And this draft of the book is the 18th.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  I wish there was a shortcut. I genuinely wish, though, after 50 years, I wish there was a shortcut. But I tell young people when they come to see me, "I'm not a ballet dancer, I do not play the violin, I'm not a counter-tenor. My gift is a simple one that I can tell a story." But you've still got to work damned hard. And one lady said to me, I wish it was a young lady, said to me, "You did 18 drafts on this book." I said, "Yes." She said, "Give me an example

• 15:31Speaker 04

  of what happens between draft 17 and draft 18."

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  And, very good question.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Good question. And what's the answer?

• 15:41Speaker 04

  And the answer was, well, there is a scene where the Earl is pushed down the stairs of his wine cellar. And the man who's killed him disappears, gets out of the house. And his wife, Victoria, comes looking for him. And she's walking down the stairs. And I had written the sentence, "Long before she reached the bottom step, Victoria realized her husband was dead." Draft 17. Draft 18. "Victoria walked down the steps, and long before she reached the bottom step, she realized she was a widow."

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, oh, well done. Oh, you are good. You are. That is very interesting.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  You see, that's 17 to 18. And it's worth doing, because I want to be able to say at the end, "If you don't like it, it's not my fault. I've done the best I can." I would hate to say, "I agree with you. I got lazy and handed it in on the fourth or fifth draft." No, I go... So that was the difference.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  But actually, this is the definition of kind of genius, because I remember being told about George Gershwin writing "It's Lovely", and then realizing what he wanted to say was, "It's still lovely."

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  And then he got to "It's delicious."

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  And it's just these little things that make all the difference. Let's go right back to the beginning.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Well, you say that. It's very interesting. Matt in the Daily Telegraph, who we all love.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  This is a cartoonist?

• 17:20Speaker 04

  The great cartoonist. His grandfather...

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Is this VS Pritchard? Is that his grandfather?

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Yes, VS, yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Famous novelist.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  The Great Man. I was only in my 30s when I saw The Great Man standing in a corner. He was our poet laureate and a very great man. And I went up to him and said, "I wonder if you could spare me two minutes, sir? I'm sorry to bother you." And Sir Vivian said, "Of course." And so we went behind a pillar. And I said, "I am sorry to bother you, sir, but either I'm a complete idiot or not very good, but I've just done 16 drafts of my new book, and I'm not... Don't feel I've finished." He said, "Only 16?" And that taught me that if a man is great as that... That was his response. That was good enough.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Keep going. Let's go back, if we may, to the very beginning, because I want to discover why you are like you are and how you've managed to do this so consistently for so long. Let's begin with your childhood, your parents, your initial role models. When were you born? Where were you born? Who were your parents? I particularly want to talk about your mother, because I think she is still part of these books.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, you're quite right.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  So, when and where were you born?

• 18:38Speaker 04

  I was born in City Road, London, and Winston Churchill gave orders that all people under the age of, I think it was 10, should go if they could. And I was taken to my grandmother's home in Weston Supermayr.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  This is because of the war.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  1940.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  So you're born in 1940. What is the day? What is the month?

• 18:59Speaker 04

  15th of April, 1940.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Cards are always gratefully received. 15th of April, 1940, you are born, but evacuation has been ordered.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Ordered by the Prime Minister. So off I go to my grandmother in Weston Supermayr, with my mother and father. And so my whole upbringing is in the West Country.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Which is why you are Lord Archer of Weston Supermayr.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  And who was this grandmother?

• 19:24Speaker 04

  My mother, you know, I guess all of you in this room can say this. This won't come as a shock, because I've been surrounded by strong women all my wife, all my life.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  That is, that is the ultimate slip of the what's-it. "I've been surrounded by strong women, all of my wife." Oh my gosh, Jeffrey.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  And the first was my mother, who became a local councillor at Weston Supermayr and chaired the Arts Committee. Second was my beloved wife, Mary, who, as you all know, was the first woman ever to chair a national gallery, the Science Museum. And the third, of course, Margaret Thatcher for 11 years. In the case of my mother, she falls into the category, and you may well say this about your grandparents, if Mary had been born 50 years earlier, she'd have been a housewife. She would not have been the first chairman of the Science Museum.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  The new generation of women have so much more that they can do. And I believe in strong women. So everybody tells me when they read the books, "Your women are so strong." Of course they are.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  So what is your sweetest memory of your childhood in Weston Supermayr with your grandmother and your parents? Your best memory?

• 20:48Speaker 04

  It's the saddest. And this book reminded me of it. "You're just too young," and I mean that, "you're just too young, so you missed it." In my youth, I saw lots of people with one arm, one leg, blind, who'd served their country. And that stuck in my mind. So I had the... 0 to 5 was the last five years of the war. And then afterwards, recovering, when we had ration books to go and get food. Oh yes, I remember that period very well indeed.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Give me a flavour, though, of you at home as a little boy. You and your mum and your granny. What did you call your grandmother?

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Granny.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Granny, and she was your mother's mother, I take it?

• 21:39Speaker 04

  My mother's mother. My mother was Lola, and my grandmother was Nell. A very wicked woman.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  When she died, when my grandfather died, and he was quite successful, he left £20,000, which in those days...

• 21:54Speaker 03

  A lot of money.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  It was a lot of money. And my aunt Eileen, who was a schoolteacher in Leeds, and my mother thought, "This is great. In time, we'll get £10,000 each." No. My grandmother decided it was time to visit Australia and see her relations in a rather nice ship called the Queen Mary. So she then took the ship to South Africa to see her other relations. She died in debt for £504.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Give me a flavour of your your mother and father when you were a little boy. What were what?

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Well, my father tragically died young. He he had been in the war and he tragically died young. So I was with I was a one parent family from about the age of nine, ten. But my mother was a remarkable woman. She was truly an example. I did I didn't realise, of course, at that age, you don't, that she was doing a job during the day, she was on the council, she was earning everything she could. And she was making sure I got tutored by a man called Mr Baker. So I won a scholarship to the school I went to because of Mr Baker. She'd arranged all that and I didn't, of course, I didn't realise it until years later.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  When she used to come up to London, and this was after Cain and Abel, she'd stay at the Savoy Hotel in the Riverside Suite and have a driver take her from Paddington to the Savoy and from the Savoy to Paddington. She would then go to Harrods and have a heyday, and then she would go home. And Mary said, and that's your way of saying thank you.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Which is lovely.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Right, God bless her. And she lived to the great age of eighty seven, and I owe her so much. She also, it's it's, she also wanted to be a novelist. She worked on the local newspaper.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  You had a column, didn't she, a weekly column?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  She had a column on the local.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Which had a lovely name?

• 23:54Speaker 04

  It it, I had a lovely name, or it was Over the Teacups.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  That's it, that's what it was called.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Over the Teacups, and I was Tuppence.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Oh, you were, she wrote about family life.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  So you were Tuppence, you were a little character in her weekly column.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  So she that, so she was a writer, but she would love to have written a novel. She told me again and again. I'm happy to say she lived to see Cain and Abel, so she saw.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  And as a little boy, before you go to, you know, before you're a teenager, what sort of little boy are you? What what are the games you like playing?

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Well, I.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  What sort of friends do you have?

• 24:30Speaker 04

  I wanted to run most of all. I was a runner at a very young age. I wanted to captain the England cricket team, but unfortunately I couldn't bat, bowl or field. Which my headmaster explained was a minor disadvantage, but but I but I could run. So a lot of my youth was spent enjoying, genuinely enjoying, running. And like all little boys, more interested in sport than little girls. And it kind of took over my life when I was chosen to run for England schools.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  And when was this? So you're at school, you're fifteen, sixteen, or?

• 25:10Speaker 04

  No, seventeen. I'm sorry, I've skipped too far, yeah, seventeen. And it was irony for those, again, you'd you'd know this, because you're the life, the life you had. I was at a little school called Wellington in Somerset, and next door was Millfield.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  So our first match of the season was against Millfield, and I thought I was a god. So I go along to Millfield, do the hundred yards, and there's four of us on the line, the two from Wellington and the two from Millfield, and I came third.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  And I went back home and thought, I've been kidding myself that I was any good. England schools final, I came third, and the two boys in front of me were the two boys from Millfield.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Isn't it? Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  So what I'm wanting to get at is when you in your head begin to see that you are, do you think you're special? What what, obviously you do think you're special because you are a god and you can run very fast. What do you think has led to this? Is it you're you're now an only child, your mother dotes on you? What has brought this sense in you? What do you think is the origins of you feeling, I can do something special?

• 26:31Speaker 04

  Well, I think that came much later, to be honest. That didn't come till much, much.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  So academically, how did you do at school?

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Well, I I won a scholarship to Wellington, thanks again to my mother, getting a tutor, which she must have paid for. Otherwise, I couldn't, she couldn't have afforded.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Did you do O levels? Yes.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Yes, O and A and so on.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  And you got those?

• 26:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was fine. But I was, by then, I wanted to run for Britain.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  So that was what was driving you? I'm going to be a runner.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Driving me.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  And you you do, you do run for your country.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, but not, I was, let's get this straight. I was never good enough. I always tell the story when I was at Oxford, when the phone went and I went to answer it and they said, we need you in Birmingham tomorrow for the four by hundred relay in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. And I said, yes, of course, I'll be there. So I I get my ticket to Birmingham and I get up to Birmingham and I'm determined to show this woman I'm madly in love with that I've run for my country. So I I go there, the relay, we win, we beat Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and I've been in the team. And I come back and I show her the programme.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  And the programme says, the England team, Radford, Watson, Davis and A N other.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  Because the man who was meant to run had fallen out and I had taken his place.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  The reason I'm trying to get at why you think you were like you were is this. We first, I I think I may be the person who's known Geoffrey in a way longer than any other person alive, and I say this for a reason.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  During what we now call a gap here, after you've left school and before you ended up at Oxford where you did a kind of teacher training and all of that, you did, tried out various things. And one of the places you ended up was a school called Dover College.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Where you were teaching as a young teacher.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  And doing athletics.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  I was at a prep school nearby called Betzanger, where there was a really splendid headmaster, a man called Iver Burton. And I remember the day we were told by Mr Burton, I have found a new running coach for you, a new athletics coach. He's at Dover College, he's coming over here on Wednesday afternoons or whenever to teach you boys how to run. And this young man is the most remarkable coach I've come across in my lifetime in education. And that is how I was introduced to Jeffrey Archer, who would have been about eighteen at the time. Now, what I'm wanting to know is what was there in you that made Mr Burton introduce

• 29:21Speaker 03

  you, an eighteen year old, a nineteen year old, to us boys as being this phenomenon? Why did you, and you were a phenomenon, because as a an instructor, he did rather bark at you.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  Would I?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  But but what made you, at eighteen, this sort of person that had that impact on people? What was there about? Where did it come from? That's what I'm trying to get.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  I think sport does that for you.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Ah, explain.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  I think sport, whether it's football, whether it's cricket, whether it's athletics, if you get to run for your country, you you do feel supremely confident. And it's funny you should say that because I think it was my downfall. I think all of it came far too young, because I I then went on to enter the House of Commons at the age of twenty nine. I was far too young. I say to people nowadays, when they come to see me about wanting to be a politician, for God's sake, don't go in the house until you're forty. Do something, achieve something, so that when you get up to speak, people want to listen. I'd achieved nothing. What what age did you enter the house?

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Forty.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  What?

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Forty. Only because I'd listened to you.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  But just to go back, so you do the teaching at Dover College, you then go to Oxford. In your head then, you are already an achiever, because you've learnt to run fast. Who at that stage are your role models? Who are your heroes when you're a young man?

• 31:33Speaker 04

  It's interesting you say that, because I think when you're that young, if you achieve that, you do believe that. My role models. Well, it'll be interesting to see how many people in the audience have ever heard of my hero. There was a man in the Olympic Games at that time, when I was a child, who won the 5,000 metres, the 10,000 metres, gold at the Olympics, gold at the Olympics, and went to the organisers, "You can't do this today. You've got to have every form filled in."

• 32:09Speaker 04

  He went to the organisers and said, "I've never run a marathon, but can I want, can I enter?" And they said, "Oh, yes, yes, join us on the line." He won. He got the gold in the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon. The great Emil Zatopek.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Who, for me, is a god. So when I was chosen to run for Great Britain against Hungary, I shared a room with my closest friend Adrian Metcalf, who was in a different class to me. And we discovered that Colonel Zatopek had been sacked by the communists and was now working as a gardener in one of the local parks.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  This is the man, the great Emil Zatopek.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  The great man.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  It was called Colonel Zatopek.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  And Adrian and I went to the park and fell on our knees in front of him.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  We wished to acknowledge that we thought he was the greatest. He's certainly, in almost everybody's eyes, one of the greatest.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  And you had this extraordinary...

• 33:09Speaker 04

  The other was, the other was.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Because you've never asked me this question before. The other was, uh, there was a, in the, in the, a man who won the discus, three golds in a row. Can you believe it? That's 12 years. And the American, he entered the American Championships. And the American Championships are always the only ones in the world, where if you get in the first three, you go to the Olympics. If you don't get in the first three, it doesn't matter if you've won everything else. If you don't do that on the day, uh, he, uh, you don't go. He came third. And the people went to him and said, "Um, we don't want you to go to the Olympics."

• 33:54Speaker 04

  "Why?" he said, "Because three golds is just a bit special. And we want that just a bit special to remain for the rest of your life." He said, "No, I'm going, I'm going." And off he goes to the Olympics. And after, there are six rounds, three rounds to get through to the last 10, and he just got through to the last 10. He was ninth or 10th. And then on his final throw, on the sixth throw, you couldn't make it up, could you? He throws a new world record.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Yay!

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Yes. And gets the fourth gold. And Jay Sylvester, a truly great discus thrower, came second. And they went up to him and said, "How do you feel about that?" He said, "When he comes in on a stretcher, it's gonna be close." And that just sums up, really, how great the man was.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Oh. But it's interesting, you tell them as stories, and they are extraordinary stories.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Um, yes. With this ambition, that you clearly, you love these achievers who keep going, you keep achieving, and you have this confidence that you say maybe came to you too early. It gave you the confidence, this is what I find interesting about you. All of us think of doing remarkable things, but very few of us actually follow through. And right from the beginning, you followed through. Tell us about, I think you're in your early twenties, approaching, for example, the Beatles. The Beatles, who were then, you know, the biggest band in the world. You're in your early twenties, and people would think it was a fun idea to do, get the Beatles involved in something. But how did you begin, how did you make it happen?

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Well, I discovered, I was at Oxford last year and supporting Oxfam's attempt to raise a million for the first time. And, uh, I read in the press that their manager, the manager of the Beatles, Mr Epstein.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  Uh, I got in touch with him. I then, you're quite right, when you're young, you do such stupid things and such. I mean, I wrote to the Prime Minister and said, "If I got the Beatles, would you cut?" And he said, "Yes, go ahead."

• 36:09Speaker 03

  And the Prime Minister was Harold Wilson or someone like that, was it?

• 36:11Speaker 04

  No, this was Harold MacMillan.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Harold MacMillan, of course, this is a long time ago.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  I'm 86, Giles!

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Grief!

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Not a child like you! So, uh, I got in touch with Mr Epstein, and of course,

• 36:27Speaker 04

  nowadays I wouldn't get in touch with Mr Epstein, because I know he'd say no. I would waste my, you don't know, when you're that age, that people will say no. And he said, "Come up to Liverpool." So I went up to Liverpool, I met the Beatles, and they agreed to come down to Oxford. And we raised the million, thanks to the Daily Mail and David English, and thanks to the Beatles.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  They came to Oxford to perform in Oxford.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  They came to Oxford, yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  I mean, this is, it is a remarkable story. No, it is, it is, it is a remarkable story. What were they like, did you like them? There's a very amusing photograph, if you've not seen this picture, of Geoffrey Holding, I think, in Oxfam tin, with, with grinning, with the Beatles looking for, who is this guy? But I mean, they did turn up, they performed for us.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, they turned up.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  What were they like? They're four very individual people. And of course, we only spent a few hours together, so I never really got to know them. I liked Paul McCartney.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  I liked George, but he was very quiet. Ringo was, I don't have a word to say, John was the most vocal. And he didn't really approve of, I'm not sure he approved of Oxford.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Whenever I meet somebody who says, you know, "I slept with one of the Beatles", and they won't tell me who it is, I know it was Ringo.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Just, just saying.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  May I ask what the hell that's got to do with Adam and Eve?

• 37:55Speaker 03

  But you've always been, I think, drawn to star personalities. Still at that period, because that's the time when you get to know, and you do get to know him, El Maitre de Burma, and there becomes that big charity event again, where involving stars, from whom I think you learn things. You have a wonderful Frank Sinatra story, I think it relates to that period. Again, that's again, you were just approaching people and saying, "Will you do this?"

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Actually, to be fair, because I was so outrageous in those days. El Maitre de approached me and said, "Would you come to tea?" So I went to tea at his lovely home in Chelsea. And he, he was surrounded by giants, you know, three admirals and, and he said, "And I want to put on a show that will make a million in one night.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Who would you invite?" So he said, I said, "Well, the biggest star in the world at the moment is Frank Sinatra." So I'd invite Frank Sinatra, and then I'd have Bob Hope doing the first half, the comedy bit. And I'd have Noel Coward introducing them. "I know all three of them," he said. But I loved it, he taught me something. He taught me what the power of, I suppose you could say, royalty or whatever. But he picked up the phone, and he phoned the head of MGM.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  And the next sentence is something that remained in my mind for the rest of my life. He knew exactly what he was doing. He picked up the phone, and they put him through, and he said, "Lieutenant!" He'd been a lieutenant in the, the head of MGM, had been a lieutenant in the navy in the war. And he replied, "Yes, Admiral." "I want Sinatra." There was a terrible silence the other end, and he got, the man got Sinatra. Sinatra came to London, he did two shows, one in front of Princess Anne, one in front of Prince Charles. They raised the million. And I'll tell you about professionalism, if I may.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  I went to see the rehearsals, who wouldn't? I went to see the rehearsals of Sinatra. And, um, three days before the show was due, Noel Coward went into hospital.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  So Maitre de rings again and says, "Who do you want?" And I said, "Well, it's impossible for a man to take Noel Coward's place. We'll need it to be a woman, I'd like Grace Kelly." "Oh, no, she, I know her well," she said. "She's been told never to perform again since her marriage, never, never, never." I said, "But it's for a charity, sir."

• 40:40Speaker 04

  "All right, I'll try." So he rang, uh, the prince in Monaco, and talked him into it. And Grace Kelly came over, and I want to tell you about the professionalism.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Sinatra would have done 20 drafts.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  The whole orchestra are playing Sinatra-type songs. And Grace Kelly does the introduction of her friend Bob Hope and her friend Frank Sinatra. She then goes and sits in the royal box. And I'm sitting on the end of about the fifth row, watching very carefully. And the orchestra, a royal Philharmonic, and at the back, he appears, no one sees him. He doesn't march out on the stage the way you and I did. And he comes through the orchestra and starts talking to a violinist, cello player, an obor, and then someone sees him and starts clapping. And then someone else sees him and starts clapping.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  And then someone starts cheering. And then he comes up to the microphone and he picks up the microphone. And he walks over to the royal box and he waits. He's got the timing so beautifully that as he reaches the royal box, he looks up at Grace Kelly and it's gone silent. And he says, "You make me feel so young." And the place, oh, the whole place just erupted. But I had watched him practice that to a split second. So everyone in the audience thought, how natural, how wonderful. He was the ultimate pro. And what he taught me there and then, that's what you have to do if you're going to be the ultimate pro. There is no shortcut.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  But you've also spent your life observing these scenes. And they are what color your books. Because you see an incident as a story and you've told it there so beautifully. So here you are in your twenties, raising money, doing different things, trying out different things. But ultimately, you've decided you're going to be a member of parliament. You now say too soon, but you apply and you get a seat straight away, do you?

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Far too soon. I went to an interview for Loth in Lincolnshire, assuming I had no, genuinely assuming I had no hope.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  It's a lovely part of the world, but you would assume that you had, you'd rather hope you had no hope if you were, you know. I mean, none of us, has any of us here ever been to Loth? Oh, it's lovely, I know that, I'm so sorry. Anyway, go on, you went assuming you had no hope.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Douglas Hurd had rung me, the former Foreign Secretary, but then he was very young and very junior. But he was head of the private office at Number 10. And he'd said, Jeffrey, we want someone young at Number 10, who will tell us what the young are thinking and what's going on. I said, well, what an honor. And I went to dinner with Ted Heath and Douglas Hurd. And they said, I said, well, I've got one problem, but I don't think it is a problem. I'm being interviewed for Loth. And I said, when that's out of the way and I failed, I'd be happy to join you. I won it. So I was, I had to say to the Prime Minister, I'm not available. And I found myself in the House of Commons at the age of 29, far too young.

• 44:02Speaker 04

  And I'll tell you another thing too, because people do say to me regularly, do you think those people in the House were more classy, more able than they are today? All I can tell you is, I sat on the back of the back of the back benches in the House and looked down at the Labour benches. And I looked at Harold Wilson, Roy Jenkins, Dennis Healy, Shirley Williams, Crossman, Crossland. They were class. It was a privilege. And I thought that was the norm, absolutely the norm. And they were on our front bench as well. And so, yes, I look back on those days when I learnt a lot.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  What you also learnt is because disaster struck, that in fact disaster can lead to success. Because you coming out of the House of Commons, which you had to do, we'll explain that in a moment, is what actually leads us to you being here today. Otherwise, you would have continued a career in the House of Commons and you would now not be here. You'd be at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  As a former Secretary of State for Transport.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, actually, very likely, very, very likely. But that didn't happen. Something went wrong and you had to step, you decided, you chose to step down. During your turn.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  I made a complete bloody fool of myself. I thought everything I touched turned to gold. I thought I was a genius. I thought I was going to be Prime Minister. And I'd made a little money. I'd been quite successful. And a banker at the Royal, sorry, not the Royal, the Bank of Boston, not the Royal Bank of Boston, the Bank of Boston, a vice president. I didn't realize that the word vice president didn't mean a damn thing. There are hundreds of vice presidents. And he told me to invest in this company that couldn't lose. The irony is, if he did that today, they'd have had to clear me. They wouldn't, in those days. So I invested everything I got and I borrowed money to invest even more.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Are we talking of tens of thousands?

• 46:06Speaker 04

  We're talking about 200,000.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Which is a vast amount of money in those days. Fifty-five years ago.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  And I lost every penny, every single penny. The irony is, as I said, if it was today, one would go to the bank and say, this is going to be on every front page. And they'd have cleared it, just dealt with it because the...

• 46:26Speaker 03

  But you couldn't go on as an MP because an MP is not able to be bankrupt. So you thought I could have stepped down.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  No, so I waited to the election, which luckily was only three months away. And quietly disappeared. And then I thought, wait a moment, I've had all my money stolen. I'd like to write about that. So I invented the theme for Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less of four young men who have lost their fortune, don't know each other, meet each other, and decide they're going to steal it back from Mr. Big. Not a penny more, not a penny less. And they mustn't go over the top because that would be stealing. That was the first book. And I got very, very lucky. Again, does this happen now in politics?

• 47:14Speaker 04

  David Owen was the Labour Foreign Secretary. And his wife Debbie was a well-known agent. And so I went to David and gave him the book.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Forgive me, just before we got the finished book, this is the first book you have written. You're not, I mean, so you've never, you hadn't written that, you wouldn't have known as a journalist.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Though your mother had created tuppence in her lovely Over the Teacups column. This was your first experience of writing a book. So you wrote it in longhand?

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Yes, the head of my college at Oxford, Sir Noel Hall, the principal of Brazeno's, gave me two rooms in his marvellous building. And I sat and wrote there for 12 weeks and came back with it. And I gave it to David Owen and said, look, David, I don't want to bother you because being Foreign Secretary is quite a big job. If your wife would be kind enough to read it. She read it and believed in it. And indeed, if I may say so, 50 years later, the book is dedicated to Debbie Owen, who made it all possible.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  That, I think, is a lovely moment for us to take our break. We have to have a break. Because this brings us around to...

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Well, I want to say one more thing.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wanted to say one more thing about where it is in the bestseller list now. This Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Published first time all those years ago.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  The first 14 publishers turned it down.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  The 15th publisher gave me an advance of 3,000 pounds.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  A reasonable amount, actually.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Which doesn't make a very big dent in 200,000.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  And Mary said, my wife said, perhaps it's time you got a real job. And I went on and everything changed with Cain and Abel.

• 49:20Speaker 05

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• 51:28Speaker 01

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• 51:39Speaker 03

  I've got almost all your books. And the one I think, am I right in thinking you've inscribed them all to me? Is Cain and Abel. I've got a first edition Cain and Abel inscribed by you. Would that be the most valuable? Would that be the one that would fetch money?

• 51:53Speaker 04

  No.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Oh, oh!

• 51:54Speaker 04

  No, because what happened, if I could give a little intro on this with Cain and Abel, is that you'll remember that there were only 3,000 copies of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. So they are the far more.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  Ah!

• 52:12Speaker 04

  But that changed all my life. It was very strange. I finished the book and handed it in to Debbie. And Debbie said, "We're not going to sell this book. We're going to auction it."

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  And I said, "What does that mean?" She said, "I will give it to the 14 great houses of the United States. They will read it, they will have one week to read it. And then they will start bidding. And they will have three days to bid." So that happened. And I said, "What happens if nobody bids?" She said, "It won't be published." So she sent it to the 14 great houses. And they took a week. And they asked for an extra day. The last two asked for an extra day. And the bidding finished at just after 2 o'clock in the morning on the Sunday,

• 53:08Speaker 04

  when Simon and Schuster bid 3 million for the rights for Cain and Abel. Those of you who have been paying attention will remember that I was in debt for 200,000. And so I brought a totally new meaning to the words "nouveau riche."

• 53:28Speaker 03

  How wonderful. The $3 million advance for Cain and Abel. And was this your second or third book?

• 53:34Speaker 04

  Third book.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  It was your third book.

• 53:35Speaker 04

  And it paid, because people love the details. You know them and understand them. It was paid a third on signing, a third on hardback, a third on softback. That's fairly common. So I was given a million straight away. And not only did I clear the debt, Mary and I were able to buy a house. Amazing thing. One or two of you may say, "Wait a minute, Geoffrey, that sounds to me like five years before you got to there." But in between, Mary became the first woman ever to teach at Trinity at Cambridge. And they gave her a beautiful flat. So we had a flat. She had an income.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  And I was scribbling away.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  And how did, how did you met Mary? And why on earth did she agree to marry you?

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Actually, I don't think that's funny. I think it's very fair. I think it's very fair. I fell in love with her on sight.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Well, as you might.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Absolutely. At a party given by Nick Lloyd, who you made-

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Indeed.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  -at Oxford. And she did not fall-

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Nick Lloyd became the editor of the Daily Express.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  Indeed, Sir Nicholas. And she didn't fall in love with me on first sight. I had to work very hard, indeed. But the shock was at the, just before our wedding, we had to, she had to go to face the examiners. And of course, it's now well-known, of course, everybody knows. She got a double first. So I was not only marrying the most beautiful woman, I was marrying the cleverest woman. And I didn't know at the time, because she's so modest and so quiet about her achievements, that you would, well, you know her well. You would never know.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  You've always been drawn to high-achieving and remarkable people. I mean, I remember back in the day, I used to give wonderful lunches, when you got your, not the present apartment you live in, but you had another apartment in the house that you have overlooking the river. And you used to give lunches on, I think, a Wednesday for 10 people, which I was lucky enough to come to. And you collected all sorts of people. Politicians, sports people, bestselling writers. You're drawn to achievement, aren't you?

• 55:59Speaker 04

  I do find, before I answer that question, that people are in another world who meet someone they would not expect to meet. Find that fascinating. You and I had the honour of having Barry Humphries as a friend.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  And I once had a dear friend too. I'll tell you two stories on that. He agreed to open, my wife was also, before she became chairman of the Science Museum, she was chairman of Cambridge University's hospital, Adam Brooks. And she agreed, he agreed to open the fete for her as Dame Edna. And I thought, "How can we possibly thank him properly?" So I thought, "He's so clever." And I'm not exaggerating. One of the cleverest men I've ever met in, and one of the best read men I've ever met in my life. So I thought, "I'll tell you, I'll get..." We had a dinner for him the night before with two Nobel Prize winners,

• 56:59Speaker 04

  three heads of colleges, two ambassadors. I mean, and of course, they loved him. And he held his own with them. I was on the way down in the car, I drove him down to Cambridge. And he said, "Who's coming to dinner, Geoffrey?" So I said, "Well, there's the Astronomer Royal, there's the head of Trinity College, and he's sitting on your right, then on your left."

• 57:34Speaker 03

  I get it.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  And he loved that. He loved the challenge of a fine brain. And wow, he was good company. People ask me how long the journey is from London to Cambridge in a car. The answer is an hour and 20 minutes. With Barry Humphries, it's five minutes. Because you're just, it's such a privilege.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  That could be-

• 57:57Speaker 04

  I would like to tell my second story. So, the saddest moment in my life, and I didn't realise it until afterwards, and this must have happened with you.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  He came to see me just before going to Australia. And I didn't realise he'd come to say goodbye. I didn't realise, because he wouldn't tell me.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  And he came and said, "I'm off to Australia." And we're looking at a picture. God, he knew his art backwards. He just made you feel you knew nothing. He didn't do it purposely, he just made you feel you knew nothing. And he's looking at this picture, and Mary walked in. And he turned and looked at Mary and said, "Mary,

• 58:40Speaker 04

  I have a word that sums you up.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  I have a word that encapsulates you." And he then put his arm around me, looked directly at Mary and said, "Tolerant."

• 58:58Speaker 03

  One of the questions here, and I can see, I can find it again, is about who you would like most to walk into the room now, that you have met before, that you most like to see again.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  Met before?

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Yes. And then, there's also one of who you haven't met but would have loved to in history.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  Which order would you like?

• 59:16Speaker 03

  The order in which I've asked them.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  So you've got, someone's going to come into the room now that you've met before, you would most like to meet again. I mean, Barry Humphries is not a bad choice, but I think you'll choose someone else.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  Mother Teresa.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Oh! Oh, that's a good answer. I've never heard his Mother Teresa story before. This is, this is a new one on me.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  She rang, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she rang to ask to speak to me and left a number. And I rang the Indian High Commissioner.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  Mother Teresa left a message on the answerphone. "Hello, this is Mother Teresa. Is that Geoffrey? I love Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  All the sisters of Little Mercy have been enjoying it as well.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  Could you call me back?" I mean, she left a message for you. "Mother Teresa..." I mean, I've heard of some good stories, but this-

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Such a ham, isn't he? So I rang the Indian High Commissioner, because don't forget, Margaret was Prime Minister and I was bag carrier. So I rang the High Commissioner. I said, "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but I've had a call from Mother Teresa asking to see me, and I thought I'd take your advice before I go to see her." And he said, "Jeffrey, she will have something she wants done. That is her nature, and she's chosen you, poor man. My advice is just say yes and do it." So off I go to the east end of London, where she's got one of her homes. And I come into the house, they take me to her.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Someone is washing her feet. So I sit opposite her, and she's desperate to get hold of this house, and she's having problems with the planning people and the council. And I explained to her that I couldn't do anything, and I also explained to her that asking the Prime Minister to do something would be pointless. So I said, "I'll ask the local Member of Parliament, because he will know the councillor, he will know the area." And it was the Liberal Member of Parliament at that time, gosh, I'm trying to come back to my mind. And I left her.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  I rang him, and he was on a train coming down to London. So I went to the station, met him, explained the whole thing, took him back to her, and he dealt with it, and she got what she wanted.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  And why was she special? Why is she somebody you would say to ask? I mean, we'd be excited to see her, of course, but why is she the person that you would most like to meet again?

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  To answer the first part of that's a two-part question. Why was she so special?

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  Can you name the person who took her place?

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  Is the answer to that question. I was, she had a charisma, she had a presence, she had something that is rare, rare, and it hits you between the eyes. Oh, yes, she was very, I would, I would...

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  In a different way, I found that with Desmond Tutu.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  Oh, of course. What a lovely man.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Because what a lovely man. He was like being with a ball of sunshine. There was a warmth about him. Now, the other part...

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  And a very brave man, too. Stood up against the authorities.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Absolutely. The other part of that question was, who would you most like, this is the old question of having them to dinner or having a drink with, who would you like to have a drink with that you have not met? Can you think of from history?

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  Dinner, not a drink.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  I'd like to have dinner with Thomas Jefferson.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  Remind us, this is the 250th anniversary of American independence, who in that context is Thomas Jefferson?

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, intellectual giant. John Kennedy once said of him, when dining at the White House with eight Nobel Prize winners, Kennedy said, "This is the greatest gathering of intellect in this room since Jefferson dined alone." So, yes, I'd love to. And I love American politics, I'm fascinated by it, and, but he... I'd love to have met him in person.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  I'd love to have met Joan of Arc, but that's, by the by, my personal fantasies are neither here nor there. Though that is one of the other questions. Who from history would you like to have married if you couldn't have married Mary? It actually doesn't say from history, it just simply says who.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  If you, if you say, "Who have I fallen in love with at a long distance?", I saw the film, I think it was called The President, I fell in love with Annette Bening.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  And the reason I fell in love with her was because she had, not only was she beautiful, but she had, she had that intelligence that I admire so much in Mary. She had that, and I could see why the President fell for her. A damn good actress as well.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I once had a very close encounter with Raquel Welsh. To be honest, I don't really mind if she...

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  I must say, that's more your style.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And whether she was intelligent or not, as far as I'm concerned, is neither here nor there. Of all, this is from Justin Ashby, are you here, Justin? He's sent in a question, but he's quite shy. If he's here, this is your, you're here. Justin, "Of all the memorable characters in your books, which are the ones you consider to most closely resemble yourself?"

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

  Oh, oh.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  What kind of character, I mean, do you write yourself...

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Well, I'm certainly more able than Cain. I'm certainly a striver, ambitious man. I had no, I didn't start with any wealth or any, any start that some children have. So I would say that, but this will shock you, in Adam and Eve. I think I'm more like Eve, and I think Mary is more like Adam.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:05:46Speaker 04

  Because Adam is the intellectual who has to fight, and Eve is a doer, and, so, yes.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Nicky Collinson wants to know, "What's your favourite character that you have created?" And I think I know the answer to the second part of Nicky's, are you here, Nicky? Oh, thank you, Nicky. Thank you for being here. The favourite character you've written, and then the favourite character that another author has written, and I think I know where we're going to go with that.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  So give me the, give me the first one.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  My favourite character, and he wasn't a character, he was real, is Mallory.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  I think, I wrote a book called, what did I call it? I wrote...

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  It's about climbing the mountain, isn't it? It's called, is it called Up and At It?

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  It's, it's...

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Paths of Glory, thank you.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  What, Paths of Glory?

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Paths of Glory.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  I was fascinated by this man who wanted to be the first person to conquer Everest in 1924. If you think chariot's a fire, that was the era he was in. Indeed, he was, he was a friend of Harold Abrams, so he, he wanted, and they didn't know what Everest was. Nobody, you all know what Everest was, they didn't. And he'd studied it and studied, and he made three attempts, and his body was found 700 feet from the top, and we don't know if he was going up or he was going down. I've just found that so fascinating, and I thought, what strength of character he had.

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  I talked to Bonington about it, and, and he, I said, "Did he reach the top?", and Bonington said, "I don't think so, but who cares? He was the greatest climber that ever lived." And I thought, what a wonderful summing, what a wonderful summing up. And I saw Bear Grylls, and I said, "I'm at 700 feet from the top, Bear. Take me to the top." And he talked me through the last 700 feet of reaching the top and coming back, and coming back down, which he said was far harder, far more difficult, coming back down.

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  So that when you read the book, it's what Bear Grylls, I've written it, but it's what Bear Grylls described to me. And that's again, we've talked often about the privilege of knowing people, Mickey Grylls and I were on the Greater London Council together.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  This is Michael Grylls, the father of Bear Grylls, who was a Member of Parliament.

• 1:08:32Speaker 04

  And so when Bear, I, I knew Bear Grylls when he was in a pram.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  When he was a cub.

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Don't encourage him. So what about a favourite character created by other people? Because you enjoy reading other people's work, do you?

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. My favourite character...

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  Would be in Vanity Fair.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  I think she's the wickedest woman.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Oh, Becky Sharp.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  I think Becky Sharp's the wickedest woman I've ever come across.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  Because I thought it was.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  I'd have lasted about a week with her. I don't know about you.

• 1:09:13Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  You'd have lasted more than a week.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  I, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have got past first base, Geoffrey. Let's be realistic. Uh, I thought you were going to say one of the Dumas creations.

• 1:09:23Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Well, time for one bit of showing off.

• 1:09:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  I was very tired. I'll tell you a story about that. The, the Washington Post wrote, Britain has found the new Alexander Dumas. So I wrote on the back of Britain has found the new Alexander Dumas and I, I rushed to my publishers in America and I said, I want that on every book. Britain has found the new Alexander Dumas. Put it on the latest book, please, please. They said, no, no, we're not going to do that. No, we're going with another winner, Larry King.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Well, exactly. Who's heard of Alexander Dumas? Because there was a father and a son Dumas, and the one you're liking is Alexander who created, what?

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  The Three Musketeers.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Unbelievably, nobody believes it today. He wrote, in the same year, The Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers, in the same year. Of course, no television in those days, no distractions. He just wrote, and, and he was always penniless. Join the club. He was always penniless. So he was writing to make money. But he wrote two masterpieces in one year.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  I've always loved the character of Serrano de Bergerac.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  I'm a bit of a romantic. You're a romantic too.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  Yes, I'm a total romantic and Serrano is, there he is in love with this woman, but he's an ugly thing.

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there we are. Moving on. David.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  David Timis, am I saying the name correctly, David? Are you here? Is it Timis or? Timis is good. Thank you. Um, good. Geoffrey, if you were writing your own life as a Jeffrey Archer novel, which episode would your editor tell you was simply too implausible to be believed?

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  And would you change the ending in any of your stories from your real life if they were fiction?

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  Well, first, to answer the first question, I'd become Prime Minister, of course. In fact, I'm available now.

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  The second answer is you can't do that, Giles. We all make mistakes. We all do things that are wrong. We all turn the wrong corner at some time in our life. And you can't just wish it away. Put it behind you, stand up, fight on. But don't be stupid enough to say, if only I'd done that, oh, it would have all been all right. It's not good enough.

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  What David is asking is if there's something totally implausible that we find hard to believe, like you uh, and Mother Teresa being seen holding hands at the, over dinner at the Caprice. I mean, people would find that hard to believe. But I now think it's quite possible. Uh, you and Mother Teresa, oh, yes. She said, call me Terry.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Then we all run with this rumor. Can we all put it out there on social media this evening? We were at this event this afternoon and Jeffrey Archer came clean about his, in quotes, affair with Mother Teresa.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  Nothing actually happened, but absolutely, it was indeed an immaculate conception. Okay. Let me not get too carried away. What he's looking for is something implausible. Something that we think would be, find hard to believe.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  What, in the book?

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  In any of your, is, is it in your life, something so ridiculous that, um, that, that you've done or?

• 1:13:07Speaker 04

  I think sometimes coincidences are

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 04

  are hard to believe. You put them in a book and people say, could never have happened, Geoffrey. Whereas in fact, in real life, coincidences are far more common than we realize. And, uh, so I'm, I, this is a pathetic one, but it, it goes to show, I was in Hong Kong, pressed the lift button, uh, opened the doors open and there was Adrian Metcalfe, my best man in Hong Kong. It's a coincidence you couldn't put in a book. Because the editor would say, sorry, Geoffrey, that's not possible. Uh, by all means have him, you know, he's in Hong Kong and you meet him, but don't, and so coincidence

• 1:13:54Speaker 04

  is much rare, is not, is much rarer, is much, is much less rare than people realize.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  Okay, we're running out of time.

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  Why?

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  Well, because you've talked so much.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  And you haven't.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Oh, Rod, Roger has asked, and this is a very quickie, can you just give us a quick answer to this? There was talk of a film adaptation of Paths of Glory with Ewan McGregor as George Mallory. Is this still happening? If so, when?

• 1:14:27Speaker 04

  Well, do you know, I want to tell you about the film world and you know it better than I do.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  God, I do.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. I have at the moment, seven films in development where they have purchased

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:41Speaker 04

  the rights. I got very lucky as a young man. Michael Grade came to see me when Cain and Abel was just hitting the world. And he came to me and said, the BBC want to make Cain and Abel and, and how, and that was wonderful. And he said, how much, Geoffrey, how much do you want? And I said, one pound. And Michael said, what are you talking about? I said, I want one pound, Michael, but I want you, you, Michael Grade, to say it'll have the biggest buildup, the biggest everything you've ever known. And I'll do it. And he kept his word. But I say to young people today,

• 1:15:20Speaker 04

  when they made Cain and Abel on television, there was only BBC One, BBC Two and ITV. There were only three programs. So surprise, surprise, 17 million people watched Cain and Abel. If it came out today with Netflix and a hundred other outlets. Nowadays, if you, I mean, seven million is considered unbelievable. Three million is thought to be very, very good and a million you don't complain at. But there were only three programs.

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  And in a way, though it's wonderful to be on television and film and it sells more copies, these are stories, these are books. And one of the things that I have learnt through the Queen's Reading Room, which is a charity that you have supported, this is Queen Camilla's campaign for encouraging the joy of reading. They've done research that shows.

• 1:16:16Speaker 04

  It's a close friend to Queen Camilla.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Only five minutes of reading fiction a day makes you feel better, you know, reduces your stress levels. Um, it's, reading the original story, you can't beat that. Two more quick questions. One from a friend of mine who's here, Clive Siddle. Clive is a brilliant person. Uh, and I'm, are you here, Clive? Or you've just sent in lots of questions? Oh, he's not over there. Clive, are you here? He's here. Oh, good. His, his carer is speaking for him.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  He, I'm, I, I do know him.

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  He's embarrassed by admitting he knows you.

• 1:16:57Speaker 03

  You win that one. Okay. He asked, what advice would you give your 16-year-old self? Because you said you were 86 now, looking pretty good, actually. Do you have a personal trainer? You're looking good.

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Can I, because I talk to 16-year-olds

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 04

  in schools. And I say, one of the things I say to them, there's nothing wrong with ambition. Just don't be surprised if you fall over on the way.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  Oh. That's a very, very good question, Clive, and a very interesting answer. This is the end of our conversation, Geoffrey. Is there anything you would like to say to all of us?

• 1:17:50Speaker 04

  I'd like to say thank you.

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  I've been very privileged in my life to have been given a single talent that demands that you spend seven, eight hours in my company again and again, for which I will always be eternally grateful.

• 1:18:14Speaker 04

  If we shadows have offended,

• 1:18:18Speaker 04

  think but this and all is mended,

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  that you have but slumbered here while this vision did appear. And this weakened idle theme, no more yielding but a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend. For if you pardon, I will mend, else the puck a liar call. So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends and Robin will restore amends.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  Jeffrey Archer. Bravo, bravo.

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  Well, there you are. The last words from Jeffrey Archer and the conversation that we had and enjoyed last Sunday at the Leicester Square Theatre in the West End of London. So our thanks to the Leicester Square Theatre, my special thanks to Liz Dawson, who's been looking after Geoffrey as his publicist for Harper Collins and who's made us being able to share this with you possible. So my thanks to her, to Liz Dawson, and to the whole team at Harper Collins. And I very much encourage you to read Geoffrey's book. I've got a lot of Jeffrey Archer books on my shelves, all signed by Geoffrey, I'm proud to say.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  And Geoffrey was so excited about this one, he felt this was in the Cain and Abel League. And he said, "You haven't read it yet." And I said, "No, I haven't read it." He said, "You must begin reading it." And I did begin reading it on Sunday night, and I read more last night. And I have to say, I'm still turning the pages. You will be turning the pages too. It's called Adam and Eve. And would you believe, it's going to be a number one bestseller again. So, well done, Jeffrey Archer. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us here on Rosebud. As I mentioned earlier, you can hear traditional Rosebud episodes with both Jeffrey Archer and Dame Mary Archer in the Rosebud archive.

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  And, gosh, it's been a week on Rosebud for remarkable writers. On Tuesday, on More Rosebud, we feature the great Don Black, the lyricist, with an episode that some people, if you look at the comments, it's lovely when we get nice comments on YouTube, some people have said that this has been their favourite, with Don Black, their favourite episode of Rosebud yet. They've liked him more than anybody. And other people said, "I had no idea who Don Black was." I think he's the guy who wrote the lyrics for five of the James Bond themes. He wrote Born, Free, I mean, he's been a lyricist of real note for a long time. He's won Oscars, Tonys, you know, you name it, he's won it. Anyway, his story is fascinating, but the way he tells it is very charming, and his account of his marriage is moving.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  So, that is there. That was More Rosebud on Tuesday, and I think later in the week, on Friday, who have we got? Oh, another bestselling novelist! Yes, it's Writers' Week here, well, it's the Year of Readings, so why not have a Writers' Week on Rosebud. It's the great Ian Rankin, great Scottish crime writer. Oh, he's got a remarkable story to tell, too. We're very lucky, aren't we, on Rosebud, to meet all these amazing people? Anyway, thank you for your company. My thanks, as I say, to Liz Dawson and the team for making this particular episode possible for us. Do enjoy Geoffrey's last novel, and I hope you enjoyed the show that we put together for you this past Sunday.

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  With thoughts to Mary Archer and to James and William, the two Archer boys, the rest of their family, and to Geoffrey's many friends, this has been a special episode of Rosebud. Business as normal on Friday. Goodbye, and cue the music.

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