Television - Andrew Billen searches hard for the principles behind Michael Heseltine
Politicians with brilliant futures behind them must be careful when choosing their television biographers. Michael Cockerell, they should certainly avoid: his unerring eye for absurdity and the dying fall of his commentary suggest that he has the phrase "All political careers end in failure" hanging embroidered above his cutting-room door.
Former prime ministers tend to choose Denys Blakeway, who gets his films of their memoirs on to BBC1; but if he is their friend, he is a candid friend. Neither Margaret Thatcher's "treachery with a smile on its face" aria nor John Major's crying jag when reminded of how he flunked his exams did them any favours. No, you had best go for Jonathan Dimbleby, a man who, suffering from the affliction himself, honours rather than ridicules self-importance in others.
Michael Heseltine, the supreme media politician, thus chose well in allowing Dimbleby to be his Rudyard Kipling for Heseltine: a life in the political jungle (Sunday 10 September, 10.45pm, ITV). Although no real jungles were available - Heseltine's 61 days in the Guards took him no further than peacetime Londonderry - the title sequence had the camera circle round the former deputy prime minister as he bestrode his arboretum, an oak among saplings, a premonition of Dimbleby's conclusion at the end of the second instalment (Sunday 17 September) that Heseltine was "a giant of his time, a politician of rare ability and exceptional courage". I think Hezza will settle for that.
Fortunately, between these two toe-curling moments, Dimbleby and his director, Alexander Gardiner, found enough critics to allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. Indeed, the opening words of the programme were not Heseltine's, but Thatcher's. "He was overpoweringly ambitious, and that seemed to be the foremost thing in his mind." Her voice still creates a chilling frisson, even if her impact is diminished when you realise that the interview is seven years old (I would guess it was taken from Blakeway's BBC documentary on her).
Reliving their ten-year spat, Heseltine gave Thatcher as good as he got. "A lot of her instincts seemed to come from the emotional, internal background of what would classically be called lower-middle-class prejudice", was probably his best shot at her. I was less impressed with his complaint about never getting a word in edgeways. Heseltine is no great listener himself, particularly, perhaps, when it comes to women. In a recent interview in the Daily Mail, he hopelessly mixed up his wife's ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage: "I think we might have both been in Australia. Or perhaps I am confusing it with some other illness she had - a gall bladder problem which was also very nasty."
Thatcher at least had allies. A point too lightly made was that Heseltine, a politician with charm but, to my mind, no charisma, simply could not be bothered to befriend colleagues. Those who know him well are fond of him - love certainly shone from the testimonials of his wife and children - but there are plenty of reasons to dislike him.
In business in his early days, he was a chancer and a showman, characteristics that dominated his political career, but Dimbleby's interviews revealed that he also had a sanctimonious, sermonising side. Twice, Heseltine used the word "cheat" to explain why he lost Cabinet disputes. Norman Tebbit's "on yer bike" speech was "despicable". He "despised" the CND protesters. He was "ashamed" of a meeting he had with Thatcher on housing policy: "It was all so trivial when we were trying to deal with great issues of state."
However, a failing - either of the programme or of the politician - is that one is left with a very hazy idea of what great principles have inspired him. I know time is tight, even over two hours, but room might have been found for a discussion of this aspect of Heseltine's career had Dimbleby left out a few of his nodding shots and archive clips of his (Dimbleby's) finest hours on ITV.
Not that I am complaining. In a week when BBC1 screened neither Panorama nor Question Time, this was classy, painstaking political television from ITV. Heseltine was taken back to his childhood home and to the room in which he met Toxteth's community leaders in 1981. He duly emoted. His children described the extraordinary sentimental visit he made with them to the Cabinet room on election day in 1997 - his farewell to ambition. The programme also did history the favour of finding a second source to back the late Julian Critchley's old tale of Heseltine jotting on the back of an envelope his career path to Downing Street.
Heseltine: a life in the political jungle ends with, as far as I can tell, a genuine scoop. At the 11th hour, long after his angina attack appeared to rule him out, Tory grandees came within a whisker of persuading him to stand against William Hague; Ken Clarke had agreed to back down in his favour. Poor Heseltine consulted his doctor and, as he spoke to him, realised that, while he had never found power a strain, the lack of it, the frustration of opposition, might have felled him. As he told Dimbleby of his decision, Tarzan came very close to tears. We interviewers term this as a result.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the London Evening Standard
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