I already have an experience of incarceration: when Mike Tyson trapped me in my flat at Grosvenor House
Published 14 February 2000
After a rather unproductive year for most of 1999, except for the continuing success of the New Statesman, I was pleased to learn that the long Department of Trade and Industry inquiry into my business affairs had cleared me. I looked forward to a fresh start in the new millennium. Within 48 hours, however, the DTI had launched another inquiry into the collapse of TransTec, the engineering company I had built up in the eighties and early nineties.
The receivership seems to have been precipitated by a Ford claim about which the non-executive directors were not informed. Certainly, I knew nothing about it when I resigned my non-executive chairmanship on taking office. The press seized on the news to resurrect a different story that is four-and-a-half years old. Two disgruntled former employees of TransTec are working out their grudges by alleging that government product development grants, going back some 14 years, were not properly accounted for. But it seems odd that nobody has yet shown me the papers - stolen from the company by one of the former employees - on which these allegations are based. The DTI has them, the BBC has them, the Sunday Times and other papers have them, and now the police have them. Perhaps I shall eventually be able to get them on the Internet.
It is clear that some sections of the press, to say nothing of our friends in the Conservative Party, would like to see me jailed for a period. I think it highly unlikely that they will be granted their wish, but I already have some mild experience of incarceration. Like most other residents of the flats wing of Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane, I was trapped by Mike Tyson's recent stay there. He was in the flat directly below mine. The day before his departure, having forgotten my key, I found myself at the flats reception with no hope of service. Nobody could get near the counter. Tyson was on his way down in the lift from the seventh floor.
Next to me in the huge crowd was a young mother of mixed race with her daughter, aged about six. I asked if they thought they had much chance of seeing Tyson. She assured me that they had, because they had watched Tyson work out in the gym the previous day and he had promised to sign the little girl's autograph book if she came back the next day. Tyson eventually emerged, spotted the girl and, undeterred by all the heavies, went over and signed her book. The girl, beside herself with delight, threw her tiny arms around one of his massive thighs. The mother, I thought, was ready to throw herself into his mighty arms - had it not been for all those minders.
Our weekly lunches at the New Statesman, held on Thursdays, are always jolly affairs, even though some (mainly lady) guests stick rigidly to mineral water. One recent guest was Sir Robin Day who insisted on sitting next to our deputy editor, Cristina Odone. Day then turned his attention to another female guest - Mary Riddell, who had conducted the now-famous interview with Lord Winston for the NS. Day needed no invitation to take on the inquisitorial role that he performed with such distinction on television. He made it clear that, in his view, her revelation about the location and form of Cherie Blair's pregnancy - an aside in an interview mainly about the NHS - was beyond the bounds. "Was this responsible journalism?" he boomed. His fellow guests roared in unison: "Yes!" I kept silent, but Day turned his gaze on me and asked: "What does the proprietor think?" Since I never interfere in editorial matters, I had an easy cop-out.
At an earlier splendidly noisy New Statesman lunch, Malcolm McLaren made such a good fist of saying what he would do if he were Mayor of London, that he was drafted by the unanimous vote of his co-diners. The manifesto for his campaign was launched in the New Statesman the following week. I doubt, somehow, that Frank Dobson will be quaking in his boots.
One of my sweetest moments at the Treasury was coming up with a wheeze to keep entrance to the major London museums free of charge. There's no room here to explain how we concocted the scheme. Anyway, it's dealt with in a forthcoming book, I think. My good deed has the reward that I am now on the museums' invitations lists. And what brilliant galleries we are blessed with: their managements are increasingly entrepreneurial and imaginative. The new building work at the Tate Bankside and at the Great Court of the British Museum is on a breathtaking scale: I'm told we are erecting the equivalent of three Chartres cathedrals. As for the current exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, 1900: Art at the Crossroads, it is a must. I preferred it even to the Monet.
Last Monday evening was the National Gallery's Trustees' annual dinner, a glittering occasion. From my seat, I had a splendid view of Titian's voluptuous Bacchus and Ariadne, one of my favourites in the gallery. My long-standing friend Philip Hughes - himself an amateur artist and great colourist - is stepping down after five years at the helm. Some recognition is overdue here. I also wish the planners would get ahead with pedestrianising the north side of Trafalgar Square. This would allow the National Gallery to extend an exciting range of new activities into the square. It would offer the potential for a piazza of Continental style and proportions.
The writer is chairman of the "New Statesman"
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