Now what? - Lauren Booth finds wisdom in BBC and Sky drivers
Published 17 June 2002
Who needs tabloids? I just listen to the blokes who drive me to Sky and the BBC
Being trapped for an hour in heavy traffic is a grim prospect if you take a black cab. It's not just the cost that crushes the spirit, it's the traditional, Sun-style chit-chat you end up nodding along to. You know, the kind that features "poncing unions", "poncing foreigners" and "poncing poofters". When I get into a black cab, the first thing I do is jam my mobile to my ear, quickly state my destination and then start acting out a romantic break-up or a multimillion-dollar business deal into the mouthpiece: "But darling, he meant nothing to me. No, neither did his girlfriend - that was just a fling!" Apart from a raised eyebrow and a smirk, there is no interaction whatsoever between cabby and customer, and that suits me.
But there is a different way. Whenever a broadcaster books my services, I check (yes, this is a little precious, but bear with me) that they are sending a hire car and not a black cab to pick me up. Not because the cars are comfier (although arriving at the BBC in a Jag makes you feel a bit special). No, it's the drivers I'm interested in, not the cars. In the past four years, I've learnt more from these men and their random facts, figures and gossip than I have from the internet and the New Scientist combined.
It's well known in Westminster that when a minister wants to know if he's safe at the next reshuffle he asks his driver. The driver's always right.
Last month, I was driven by a former leading civil servant from Downing Street; he'd been in charge of "logistics" since the Thatcher days. We listened to the Sixsmith saga unfold on the radio. Then he started to spill the beans. "It's not Sixsmith's fault," he sighed. "No one trusted the new Labour bunch. They'd stitch you up as soon as they'd look at you. There's no trust there whatsoever any more." It was on his watch that the new bosses had insisted he sack all his staff and "rehire them under private contracts". It cost more in the short term but denied the staff any pension, savings and health benefits in the long term. He quit in disgust.
Perhaps my favourite driver is a small, quiet man from Iraq who drives me to Sky occasionally. The night after Bush's "axis of evil" speech, we were heading back to north London way after midnight.
Apropos of nothing, he said: "My country is not your enemy, Miss. This I swear." His cousin had been in charge of a supposed "weapons factory" bombed by the Americans.
"It made milk powder. You know, for children? When the powder settled we scooped it into our tea for the cameras. No one showed the pictures. The reports said there had been 'chemicals' there. But are we crazy, to poison our own tea?"
I was wide awake. He began filling me in on a business relationship between the Bush and the Hussein dynasties which spanned two decades. Apparently, a member of the Hussein clan died in a mysterious plane accident in the late Eighties and the Iraqis are convinced that a US ground-to-air missile shot him down. Guess where? In Texas.
A lot of the African drivers I meet are studying over here. It was a Somali student of biology who convinced me never to eat another non-organic chicken. Let's just say that breasts on men and beards on women aren't very attractive. My favourite, though, is the elderly cockney communist who ranted with such fury about the jubilee that I hugged my knees in glee. He has a theory about the Queen Mum, too.
"Ever hear her talk?" he asked. No.
"Aha! Exactly! That's because she died decades ago, you see, and the old dodderer shuffling around in a big hat was some impersonator they hired to make us think she was still around."
Why? "Well, it's obvious - so that they could screw us out of even more money."
OK, some of my lovely drivers are a bit bonkers, but their rants still beat those of Tabloid Tommy any night of the week.
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