The power and the story

08/05/2008 

AS CO-HOST of Newsnight, Gavin Esler is a man known to millions as “the one who isn’t Jeremy Paxman”. Between working at Newsnight and BBC News 24, the 55-year-old journalist has written a thriller about politics and power.

It explores the secret arrangements in the 1980s between the West and the Middle East and how the world is living with the consequences. Meeting him at BBC Television Centre in White City, it’s tempting to subject him to the kind of grilling he administers nightly to politicians.

So, Mr Esler, why should the British public be interested? “There is a gap for novels which explain how power works,” Esler tells me. We are sitting nursing polystyrene cups of BBC tea in a deserted courtyard at the corporation. He has just finished presenting News 24; the make-up is still on.

“I get to see close up very important people and how they operate and I felt I should use that privilege,” he explains. A Scandalous Man, the first book in a two-book fiction deal with HarperCollins, spans more than two decades from the Iranian Revolution and election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 to the London bombings of 2005.

It traces the rise and fall of a talented Tory politician, Robin Burnett, taking in the miners’ strike, the rise of Islamic extremism and the Iran-Contra scandal. It splices in historical events so we hear about the birth of Leo Blair and witness some delicious scenes with the Iron Lady herself. Its mix of fact and fiction has led to speculation as to who the character of Burnett is based on — which Esler dismisses like a pro.

BEYOND REDEMPTION

“Any politician who thinks it is them is beyond redemption,” laughs Esler. “It’s like that Carly Simon song, ‘You’re so vain — I bet you think this song is about you’.” Esler is relaxed company. He jokes not about his M&S briefs, as Paxman famously did, but about how the designer of his book cover put the House Of Commons portcullis insignia on the backside of his character: “It looks like a trapdoor to his underpants,” he exclaims.

Esler has been at the BBC since 1977, spending much of his time in America, where he covered Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and Bill Clinton. It was his experience reporting on the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s (when arms were traded for hostages) that has left a strong impression on him.

“I wanted to talk about things which I had been told happened,” he says. “But I thought it would be more fun to do it through fiction than journalism. We have failed to come to terms with the changes that happened in 1979 — that’s whythere’s still potential for conflict with Iran and why we have had the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which could go on easily for another 20 years.”

RACY THRILLERS

Esler, who had moderate success with three racy politics-flavoured thrillers in the 1990s as well as a non-fiction book about American discontent, is hoping his new political romp will appeal to a wider market. “I have interviewed lots of politicians: Chirac, Clinton, Thatcher, Blair,” he says. “I can’t think of any major political figure who I have interviewed in a democracy who is actually evil. But I can think of a few who are delusional. I don’t mean they hear voices … well, maybe they do, though they didn’t tell me ... but I think they are tempted into the view that they are absolutely necessary for their country to prosper.

“Politicians who don’t see that everyone has had enough of them is one of the stories of our times. I’m not cynical about politicians, but I’m very sceptical. More honesty would berefreshing. For example, I cannot think of a single politician who would say a fall in house prices would be a good idea. But so many know a reasonable, cushioned fall would be, especially for young people.”

Esler acknowledges that the demands of 24-hour news on politicians can inhibit them from speaking their minds but having fronted News 24 since its inception in 1997, he won’t bite the hand that feeds him. “News should be like a utility — like your electricity, gas or water. You should be able to turn it on like a tap, not wait ’til 10pm when the voice of God will tell you what’s been happening in the world.”

He may not be ditching the day job, but Esler is an ambitious and savvy novelist keen to win new fans. “I am planning to pay my female friend, her attractive sister and two other beautiful women to sit on the Tube at rush hour with my book. They will all take different lines up and down and round and round to try and get people talking about it.”

A Scandalous Man is published this week by HarperCollins, priced £17.99

CV | A LIFE AT THE BBC

GAVIN ESLER was born in 1953 in Glasgow. Because his parents had little money, for the first three years of his life, they lived in the back bedroom of his grandmother’s council estate in Clydebank. When his father got a better job, the family moved to Edinburgh, near a US airforce base.

Many of his childhood friends were Americans and Esler recently discovered some of their parents were spying on the Russians. He began his career in print journalism on the Belfast Telegraph and joined the BBC as Northern Ireland correspondent in 1977.

After a short stint on Newsnight he was made Washington correspondent in 1989 and chief North America correspondent a year later. In 1997 he became the anchor for BBC News 24, reporting from all over the world. He returned to Newsnight in 2003.

Last year his 14-year old Charlotte did a report for Newsnight about her battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was speaking to her father as part of a series of reports on cancer. Her cancer is now in remission.

Esler also has a younger son.

By Johanna Thomas-Corr