Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced Tory peer and bestselling author, has died aged 86. His death came peacefully at home on the eve of publication of what was to be his last novel, Adam & Eve.
Archer's easy charm was disarming, and I liked exchanging words with the star from Somerset, rubbing shoulders on ITV's Good Morning Britain and enjoying signed copies of his readable works. Back in the day, interviewing Archer for the Daily Mirror in a fabulous Westminster penthouse overlooking Parliament that doubled as an art gallery, I walked past the Monet then left at the Picasso to a toilet with a Hockney.
A Life of Fiction and Fantasy
Yet we cannot, should not spray paint away the dark underbelly of a powerful and wealthy man because, if we're honest, the wreaths have painful thorns. Not porkies told about salad days, although invented A levels and inflated boasts about studying at prestigious Oxford University (he actually went to an education college in the city), or even a controversy over how much he raised for persecuted Kurds in Iraq, sounding alarm bells.
What must not be overlooked is Archer deploying his status and clout to mercilessly crush Monica Coghlan, a troubled Northern working class woman he paid for sex then ruthlessly wrecked to collect £500,000 and save his own reputation in a 1987 libel trial. Archer was subsequently jailed four years for perjury in 2001 after his web of deceit to deny sleeping with sex worker Coghlan, winning jackpot damages and costs from two newspapers, was itself ripped apart by a disgruntled friend and co-conspirator.
The Unforgivable Crime
The unforgivable crime was Archer's callous, brutal hammering of a mother who told the truth as he cynically lied through his teeth in a court where the besotted judge fell for Archer's “fragrant” wife Mary and treated Coghlan like something unpleasant he'd stepped in on the pavement. Coghlan, who in the witness box kept breaking down in tears during 13 hours of bashing by the loaded liar's top dollar lawyer, subsequently told the Mirror feted tormentor Archer ruined her life. She didn't live to see justice of sorts and Archer's imprisonment, Coghlan dying in a car crash shortly before the second trial.
He was to walk out of the prison gates and straight through Parliament's gates, resuming his seat on the ermined benches and resurrecting a glittering literary career including three inevitably bestselling volumes of prison diaries. Archer, insist his closer friends, emerged a better person from jail, less arrogant with a touch of humility.
The Ultimate Comeback Kid
Rebounding from a bankruptcy that forced him to quit as an MP to write books that sold more than 300 million copies worldwide crowns Archer the ultimate comeback kid. But let's not forget tormented victim Coghlan, the woman he used then pitilessly abused.
