Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings

by Craig Brown

  And so it goes on. In the heat of the moment, both debaters grow intemperate. At one point, Hitchens praises the Bush administration’s handling of the flooding in New Orleans. ‘This is where it ends,’ retorts Galloway, ‘– you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans.’

  In turn, Galloway appears to excuse the 9/11 terrorists. ‘Some believe that those aeroplanes on September 11 came out of a clear blue sky,’ he says. ‘I believe they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us.’

  ‘Mr Galloway,’ replies Hitchens, ‘you picked the wrong city to say that ... Our fault? No, this is masochism. And it is masochism being offered to you by sadists.’

  America has grown used to its political elite wanting to be loved, or at least respected. It is fresh to the pleasures of mutual vituperation.

  ‘That is the end of my pro bono bit,’ Hitchens says at the end of his summing-up. ‘From now on, if you want to speak to me, you’ll need a receipt, and I’ll be selling books, because this is, after all, America.’ There is no vote taken, so no way to judge the winner. The opponents refuse to exchange another word: each stays in his own corner, busily signing copies of his latest book.145 The debate’s mediator also has a book to sign. After a tiring day, they stand united behind the cause of self-promotion.

  GEORGE GALLOWAY

  FACES THE POPULAR VOTE AGAINST

  MICHAEL BARRYMORE

  Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire

  January 23rd 2006

  The Respect Party MP enters the television Big Brother house on January 5th. He is doing so, he maintains, because it is good for politics: ‘I believe that politicians should use every opportunity to communicate with people. I’m a great believer in the democratic process.’ As he enters the house, he shouts, ‘Stop the war!’

  His fellow housemates are: Dennis Rodman, a retired American basketball player; Faria Alam, a former secretary at the Football Association, infamous for her kiss-and-tell affairs with the England football manager and the Football Association chief executive; Jodie Marsh, a former ‘glamour model’; Pete Burns, a transvestite singer with the group Dead or Alive; Preston, lead singer with the group the Ordinary Boys; Rula Lenska, an actress; Traci Bingham, the first black actress on Baywatch; Chantelle Houghton, a part-time Paris Hilton lookalike; Maggot, a Welsh rapper; and finally Michael Barrymore, the all-round family entertainer whose career nosedived five years ago, following the discovery of a corpse in his swimming pool.

  Their first task is to line up in order of fame. In fact, Chantelle is not remotely famous, but has been secretly tasked with convincing the others that she is. Within the short time allotted, the housemates decide that Michael Barrymore is the most famous and Maggot the least. George Galloway comes fourth, between the Baywatch actress and the transvestite singer.

  During the first few days, Galloway is chummy with Barrymore, and tells everyone he wants him to win. Barrymore is so moved by this unexpected show of support that he starts to cry. Galloway kisses him on the head. After a week, they have become firm friends, with Galloway defending Barrymore from an attack by Jodie Marsh, who is upset that he has eaten her food. He calls Marsh ‘a wicked person’.146

  Outside the Big Brother house, his fellow MPs criticise Galloway for neglecting his duties. He has, they argue, become a national laughing stock after going down on all fours and pretending to be a cat, then cavorting about in a red leotard.

  Inside the house, his bonhomie is beginning to fray. He rounds on Chantelle and Preston for going into a secret room and eating luxury food denied to other housemates. ‘If I had been called in there I would have stood ramrod straight, refused to sit down, refused to eat, refused to drink, refused to smoke. I would have said, “You brought me here under duress, but I will refuse to partake in things that others are not allowed!”’

  ‘We were playing a game,’ replies Chantelle, reasonably. Galloway then attacks Preston: ‘You’re a sneak and a liar and you’re exposed to the world as a sneak and a liar ... We’ll see what the viewers thought of your double standards, your indignation about me and the aplomb with which you become a lying plutocrat in your gentleman’s club.’

  He then turns his rhetoric on Barrymore for failing to support him when Big Brother removed his right to nominate people for eviction.

  ‘I was close to you, and Dennis was close to you and you stabbed both of us because of your mania about hoarding cigarettes ... Despite all the support I had given you, despite all the efforts I had made for you, when it came to a problem that I was facing, you were silent. You know why? Because you care about nobody except yourself. You’re the most selfish, self-obsessed person I have ever met in my entire life! ... You’re the only person you’ve talked about in here.’

  At this point, Preston steps in.

  PRESTON: He’s talked about everyone non-stop!

  GALLOWAY: You haven’t even talked about your partner in here ...

  PRESTON: He’s talked about him non-stop! I can tell you everything he’s said about him! ...

  GALLOWAY: You’re self-obsessed!

  BARRYMORE: Oh, come on, George. George, you’re in this frame of mind because you’ve been nominated again, and you take it as a personal slight ... I’m an easy target ... You’re playing to the outside world.

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!

  PRESTON: Oh, don’t fucking bring that into it, that is low!

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!

  BARRYMORE: You are out of order ... you are out of order!

  PRESTON (POINTING AT GALLOWAY): You are a fucking wanker! You are fucking low!

  BARRYMORE: You are out of order!

  PRESTON: Wanker!

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me.

  BARRYMORE: And you’re doing it with a smile!

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me.

  BARRYMORE: You want to play around with an addict?

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me.

  BARRYMORE: Is that what you want to do?

  GALLOWAY: Poor me, poor me.

  BARRYMORE: That’s how caring you are, you care so much about everybody! ... George, I feel really sorry for you. You’re that sad, no wonder Tony Blair threw you out!

  GALLOWAY: Keep on talking, keep on talking.

  BARRYMORE: No wonder Blair threw you out.

  GALLOWAY: Keep on talking!

  BARRYMORE: You can do that smile, George, it don’t work, you need a bigger smile than that for the camera! ... You can do what you like to me, you can tear me down and rip me apart. But one thing you can’t have is my sobriety. When you’ve been to where I have been to, some of you may know what it’s like. Then stand up and have a go at me, until you reach that spot in your life, if ever you reach that spot in your life ... I beg you, please, to keep your opinions to yourself. And I’ll do what I’ve done all the way through here and keep mine to myself.

  (LONG PAUSE)

  BARRYMORE: Coffee, anyone?

  The argument rages for twenty minutes. The next day, Galloway becomes the second housemate to be evicted from the house, with 65 per cent of the popular vote. The eventual winner is Chantelle Houghton. Barrymore comes second, emerging from the house to a chorus of cheers. But his career fails to revive; three years later he is spotted working part-time at a vehicle bodyworks business in Epping.

  MICHAEL BARRYMORE

  IS BEFRIENDED BY

  DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

  Bayswater, London W2

  May 1996

  The chief psychiatrist at the Marchwood Priory mental-health hospital looks over his half-moon glasses. ‘I have something for you which I think may cheer you up,’ he says to his patient, Michael Barrymore. He is holding a letter from someone his patient has never met.

  My dearest Michael,

  I was so sad to hear that once again you had had to be re-admitted to The Priory ... You have given so much happiness
and pleasure to me and my family over the years, as you have millions of others. The least we can do is to be there for you when you need all the love and care you can get.

  At the moment I am writing this to you from Majorca, where I am on holiday with the boys. As soon as I return and you are well I would love to meet up and have some time together. The boys send you their very best wishes. Much love from me, and please let me know when we can meet.

  Love, Diana

  The psychiatrist gives his patient a broad smile. ‘It wasn’t every day that one of his patients received a letter from the Princess of Wales, and I guess he couldn’t hide his excitement,’ reflects Barrymore.

  A few weeks later, Barrymore, fresh out of rehabilitation, receives a letter from Diana asking why he hasn’t phoned. He sends a letter back saying, ‘I didn’t want to bother you.’ The reply comes: ‘Well, bother me!’

  Their first meeting is, in Barrymore’s view, ‘all very cloak and dagger’. It is arranged through courtiers: Barrymore’s agent deals with the journalist Martin Bashir, who has become something of a fixer for the Princess. It was in his Panorama interview with her that she spoke of her betrayal by her husband, her bulimia, and her affair with James Hewitt. It was also in this interview that she announced her intention to be the ‘Queen of Hearts’, helping ‘other people in distress’.

  The Princess stipulates that they should meet at Barrymore’s house, and that no one else should be there, not even Barrymore’s wife Cheryl. On the day itself, Bashir rings twice more, to make sure that Cheryl will not be present.

  At the back of Barrymore’s mind is the idea that it is all a hoax. ‘Then in walked the Princess of Wales as large as life. Up until then, I was extremely nervous, but the moment she walked in she had this amazing ability to put you at ease.’

  ‘Hello,’ she says, kissing him. ‘How are you feeling?’

  They sit together on a sofa and talk about Barrymore’s shows. Barrymore is impressed by how many the Princess remembers. ‘It was as if we’d known each other all our lives.’

  ‘So, what do I call you? Princess Diana?’

  ‘Just Diana. I’m not a princess any more.’

  Diana looks around the room. She points at a framed photograph of Cheryl, Barrymore’s wife of twenty years.

  ‘Oh, is this wifey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cheryl is at that moment alone at the top of the house, four floors above them.

  ‘I want you to know that you can come through all this – you just have to be strong.’ The Princess tells the entertainer that she really wants to be there for him.

  ‘It was pretty strange really, hearing that the Princess of Wales wanted to be there for me,’ he says some years later. ‘I keep asking myself Why? Why me? ... I think she truly believed that we were both very similar in personality.’

  She is right. Both are adored by the public but uncomfortable with those close to them. They have the gift of empathy, but largely with people they don’t know. They possess unstable, addictive personalities but have become popular through their capacity to appear ‘down to earth’. And they both like to retreat into the spotlight.

  After several hours, the door opens. It is Cheryl, interrupting them. ‘Diana, your car is waiting.’

  Diana gives Barrymore her telephone number, and leaves. He feels a huge weight lifting from his shoulders, ‘I felt I was getting advice and immense support from the highest level possible. I will always remember those eyes ... she was able to show every emotion through them.’

  From then on, they talk almost every day. She sends him handwritten notes, delivered by her butler Paul Burrell, asking him to call her whenever he has a problem. It is a bad year for Barrymore: he has a nervous breakdown, his new television series is cancelled, he is readmitted to a clinic and his next television show, Barrymore in Hollywood, is shelved.

  He begins seeing Diana at Kensington Palace. One day, she ticks him off for parking his Bentley in Princess Margaret’s parking space. He thinks of her as a counsellor. She tells him they are so alike, so unique, and nobody must ever control them again.

  He starts to rebel, falling over at awards ceremonies and slurring inappropriate jokes at charity shows. Cheryl thinks of Diana as a destructive force, and blames her for mesmerising him: ‘He would often have a distant look in his eyes, almost like a religious conversion.’ He tells Diana he is gay; she urges him to come out, and he does.

  Diana likes to tell him that she, Barrymore and Paul Gascoigne are the three most famous people in Britain. Within a short time, she will be dead, and Barrymore and Gascoigne ruined.

  One Friday, she appears distant. He asks her what is wrong. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she says. ‘I’ve just been rushing around because I’m going off to Paris with Dodi ... Do you want to meet next Wednesday?’

  That Sunday morning, she dies in a car crash. He and Cheryl go together to her funeral, even though they have split up. Inside Westminster Abbey, Cheryl tells him to adjust his suit.

  ‘Give it a break will you?’ he snaps.

  After the funeral, he moves away from Cheryl to go and chat to the crowd.

  ‘It seemed the right thing to do,’ he explains.

  DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

  LEARNS A LESSON FROM

  PRINCESS GRACE

  Goldsmiths’ Hall, London EC2

  March 3rd 1981

  The engagement of HRH the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was announced exactly a week ago. The future Princess’s first public engagement is to be a musical recital at Goldsmiths’ Hall in aid of the Royal Opera House.

  The nineteen-year-old Diana is excited. She has chosen a black dress from the Emmanuels.147 ‘It was just a simple dress I had hanging in the show room,’ recalls Elizabeth Emmanuel. ‘It had actually been worn once by Liza Goddard. Lady Diana asked for something off the peg, which we didn’t really do. She needed it quickly and there was no time to make a dress from scratch ... We showed it to her, she tried it on and she looked sensational.’

  ‘I thought it was OK because girls my age wore this dress,’ is the way Diana remembers it. ‘I hadn’t appreciated that I was now seen as a royal lady, although I’d only got a ring on my finger as opposed to two rings. Black to me was the smartest colour you could possibly have at the age of nineteen. It was a real grown-up dress.’ The dress is in stark contrast to the frumpy one she wore for her engagement photographs. One writer describes it as ‘a black, very décolleté, strapless evening gown’; another, more excitable, calls it ‘that nipple-busting, black taffeta eye-popper’.

  Diana is due to attend the concert without her future husband by her side. She is nervous, but excited. Before she sets off, she appears at the door of his study. He looks at her, and drily comments that only people in mourning wear black. Diana tells him she has no other dress suitable for the occasion.

  This little spat knocks her confidence. Now she fears she will prove an embarrassment to the royal family.

  When her car arrives at Goldsmiths’ Hall, Diana steps out to a mass of flashing cameras. The same excitable writer describes it as ‘the greatest moment of sexual theatre since Cinderella swapped her scuffed scullery clogs for Prince Charming’s glass slippers’. Diana, already nervous, is taken aback. ‘I was quite big-chested then and they all got frightfully excited.’ Elizabeth Emmanuel is similarly surprised. ‘We were overwhelmed by the impact it made when she stepped out of the limo, revealing all that cleavage. It knocked the Budget off the front page of every newspaper.’ Even those without any great interest in current affairs take an interest in the dress. Leafing through The Times the next morning, the ancient society belle Lady Diana Cooper remarks to a friend, ‘Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before a king?’ An aide to Princess Grace of Monaco recalls, less jovially, ‘Her breasts were on display and she was quite a wreck.’

  As the evening progresses, Diana grows even more unsure of herself. ‘It was an horrendous occasion. I didn’t know whether to go out of the door f
irst. I didn’t know whether your handbag should be in your left hand or your right hand. I was terrified really – at the time everything was all over the place.’

  A reception at Buckingham Palace follows. The fifty-two-year-old Princess Grace, the object of this sort of attention back in the 1950s, notices Diana’s discomfort, and suggests they retire to the ladies’ room for a little chat together. Diana tells Princess Grace that she is worried her dress is unbecoming. It is, she explains, two sizes too small. Her experience tonight has suddenly made her realise how unbearable it will be to have hundreds of people always looking at her. She sees stretching ahead of her a life without any form of privacy. She feels isolated, and fears for the future. What should she do? She bursts into tears.

  Princess Grace puts her arms around her and pats her on the shoulder. She cups her cheeks in her hands and jokes, gently, ‘Don’t worry, dear. You’ll see – it’ll only get worse.’

  The two women return to the throng, there to mingle and be assessed. ‘I remember meeting Princess Grace and how wonderful and serene she was,’ Diana later tells her confidant Andrew Morton. ‘But there was troubled water under her, I saw that.’

  Eighteen months later, Princess Grace is killed after her car fails to take a sharp corner on the serpentine D37 outside Monaco. Though the Prince of Wales sees no reason why Diana should attend the funeral, she is adamant that she should go. It will be the first time she has officially represented the royal family on her own.

  By now, she has grown used to the hullabaloo surrounding her every appearance, and in some way appears to feed off it. For this occasion, she chooses to wear another black dress, far more demure, with a diamond-and-pearl heart necklace and a black straw boater.

  On the way to the funeral, a number of things go wrong: the car breaks down, a lift gets stuck. But Diana remains poised and unflustered throughout. At the High Requiem Mass, she takes her place between Nancy Reagan and Madame Mitterrand. Other guests include many of the crowned heads of Europe, as well as Hollywood stars like Cary Grant, but for the worldwide TV audience of 100 million and the weeping crowd of onlookers outside the cathedral, Diana is the centre of attention. She doesn’t put a foot wrong. ‘My respect for her rose a hundredfold ... She was very hassled but behaved brilliantly,’ says a fellow guest. At the reception afterwards, she speaks to Princess Caroline of Monaco about her mother. ‘We were psychically connected,’ she tells her.