My Memories of Ann Widdecombe

Today I will be attending Ann Widdecombe’s funeral in south Devon.

My last event in Edinburgh finished at 9.30pm last night so the only way to get to Totnes in time was to be driven, given I don’t get my driving licence back until the weekend. My best friend Dan Bryce drove up from Kent yesterday and has driven me through the night so I can be there. He’s an absolute hero. And then there’s the matter of another four hours or so back to Kent afterwards.

In the days after Ann died, I did countless TV interviews trying to explain who she really was, and countering some of the lies and insults that were being thrown her way by people who should know better. The wife of a friend of mine was watching one of these interviews and apparently remarked: “There’s a man who hasn’t had time to grieve.” She was right. I hadn’t computed the awfulness of what had happened and had to go into commentor mode, otherwise I’d have been too emotional. I don’t normally cry at funerals, but I am fully expecting to be in floods of tears at this one, staring at the coffin which will contain poor Ann’s battered body. I think that’s when it will really hit me.

I first met Ann 29 years ago, when I opened Politico’s Bookshop. On her first visit she we had made some badges saying ‘Doris Karloff for Tory Leader’. She found this hilarious and bought several dozen of them.

One day she came in and she almost collapsed in a heap when we gave her a pair of lacy, black, knickers, emblazoned with “Something of the Night”, the slogan she had invented to derail Michael Howard’s leadership campaign. “But they they’re too small. They won’t fit,” she cried. A vision was forming in my mind… She was just leaving the shop when I noticed she had left the knickers on the counter. So I yelled after her “Ann, you’ve forgotten your knickers!” And there can’t be many men that have said that to Ann Widdecombe.

Ann’s first novel, The Clematis Tree, was a huge success, but I do sometimes wonder why. She certainly had a unique way of selling it. 

At the Tory Party Conference in 2000, I was rather alarmed at her marketing technique. Like a market trader she would brandish the book and shout out: “No sex, no violence, no swearing! Get your clean novels here!”  Ann, I thought, “you’re at a Tory Party Conference!”, which let’s face it usually has its fair share of all three. But she proved me wrong – and we sold all 400 copies. The next year, she was back and was reprising her market trader act. As she was screeching and signing, a delivery of Edwina Currie’s explosive new diaries arrived. All 200 of them. Edwina had captured the headlines with the revelation that she and John Major had had an affair. I quietly displayed a dozen of the Currie diaries next to Ann and waited for her to notice. She did not have a high opinion of Edwina. Sure enough, she clocked them and changed her sales patter and pointed to Edwina’s tomes, shouting, “Very dirty diaries, get your clean novels here!”, pointing to her new book ‘An Act of Treachery’. I used to take her to task for this as I had found a passage on page 158 where it was quite clear that she main character had had sex with her Nazi lover. Ann denied this and described it as ‘wooing’. ‘Not in my house, it isn’t’, I’d reply.

Ann and I did a theatre tour of around 50 provincial theatres with our show ‘A Night with Ann Widdecombe’. I’d interview her for the first half and then I’d host a Q&A. We didn’t have a script as such, but I knew the prompts to give so she could regale with audience with various stories and anecdotes.

 The theatre shows produced some hilarious moments, including one in Chelmsford when a militantly gay member of the audience got up and walked out shouting at us to eff off because we were bigots. It was that same evening when two of my favourite moments occurred.

 ID: So when ITV ask you to do these programmes, how do you judge whether to do them?

AW: Well, when they asked me to do prostitution, I readily agreed… [cue audience collapsing with laughter]

The theatre was sold out, with more than 500 people packed in. The repartee worked a treat, to the extent that one man said to me afterwards: “You are so easy together. Are you an item?” Miss W was a bit too quick to reply: “We most certainly are not!” He didn’t look convinced…

The only time I saw her stumped was when a member of the audience asked: “Miss Widdecombe, can you please explain why any member of the female sex would ever want to have an affair with John Prescott?” She gulped like a goldfish.

I’d usually drive her to the venues and we’d chew over the issues of the day on the journey. On the rare occasions she was awake we gossiped and sometimes bared our souls to each other. 

On Celebrity Big Brother Ann admitted she snored, and wondered how other housemates would react to it. Seeing as Ann mentioned it herself, I think I can reveal I have personal experience of Ann’s snoring. [Stop it at the back!]. When we’d drive to theatres all around the country she’d inevitably fall asleep in the passenger seat. Gradually her head would loll, back, her mouth would open and out would come some startling snoring noises. I could turn the music up as loud as I liked, but it had no effect. Even a dose of Meat Loaf had no effect. The eruptions would continue. The only think that quelled them was a quick poke to her side. It did make me laugh, though! When she eventually woke up, she’d always say: “I hope I didn’t snore”… “Absolutely not,” I replied…

 I remember once driving to Malvern on the night of the Commons vote to allow gay people to adopt children. Conservative MPs had been whipped by Iain Duncan Smith to vote against.

I was fulminating about what a ridiculous decision that had been, and that it should have been a free vote. If memory serves me correctly, she agreed, although you can imagine that’s where the agreement ended.

At one point I remember saying: “I don’t know why I am talking about this seeing as I have never, ever wanted children.” Ann was very shocked by this and said I couldn’t be serious. Just as she didn’t believe I never wanted children, I never quite believed her protestations that she was quite happy being single and childless. She addressed this issue in her autobiography, STRICTLY ANN, and it is clear, to me at any rate, that family was, and had been, the most important thing in her life. The way she looked after her mother after her father died in 2007, was a lesson to many. Ann joked that she relishes the single lifestyle. When she got home, she could kick off her shoes, pour herself a whisky and watch whatever she liked on TV without caring a jot about demands likely to made on her by a husband, but even so, I still reckoned the lady did protest too much. I can think of few things which would have given her friends more happiness than if she had met someone at that stage in her life and fell head over heels. It would have been a brave man who took her on, but one thing I have learnt is that there is someone out there for everyone. They just have to find each other. I can imagine her reading and spluttering ‘yuck’ or ‘stuff and nonsense’.

Anyway, on that journey I told her why I thought it was right to allow gay people to adopt. I said that surely it was better for a child to be in a safe home with loving parents, whatever their sex, than stay in a children’s home for the rest of their childhood. She maintained that stability for a child was very important, and then came out with this corker. “It’s a well-known fact that gay relationships only last an average of two years!” I shot back: “That’s rubbish. In my experience it’s more like 20 minutes.” I could see the cogs whirring in her brain and when she finally computed what I was implying she had the good grace to roar with laughter.

Ann rarely enjoyed my driving. She’s a very good backseat driver, if you get my drift. I remember one time, we had been to Porthcawl in South Wales and we’d had nothing to eat all day. After the show we stopped to get some petrol and stocked up on a bit of junk food – right in the middle of her diet.

I got onto the M4 and started opening the sandwich and packet of crisps and can of lilt. Ann nearly had a fit – OK I was driving with my knees but it was perfectly safe! “Do you not think you ought to have at least one hand on the steering wheel!” she screamed. So I got my own back. I made her listen to the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure for the rest of the three hour journey back.  She never forgave me.

I asked her one day if people reacted differently to her now that she had dyed her hair blond. She said “people speak to me now, much m o r e s l o w w w w l l l y y y”.

When STRICTLY ANN was published, Christopher Howse wrote a disgusting review of it for the Telegraph in which he reckoned the whole book was about a failed life. He had a very warped view of what constitutes success. That’s the trouble with Widdecombe book reviews. They tended to be dominated by the critic’s pre-existing opinion of Ann, rather than concentrate on the book’s literary merits. Her novel AN ACT OF TREACHERY, a story of love in second world war Paris, was a brilliant tale, expertly researched and told. But most reviews concentrated on the absence of sex in it.

The thing is, Ann could write. And she could tell a story. This was not a book about a failed life. It was a book about a woman of definite opinions, who made her way in the world with little help from anyone and became one of the best- known women in the country. She neared the peak of the political mountain, stuck to her guns, was seen as the most honest politician in the country and respected even by her foes. She made some excellent (but also, it has to be said, one or two truly terrible) TV programmes, was a best-selling author and one of the best orators of her generation. You know, most people would settle for that as a record of accomplishment. Clearly not Christopher Howse, but you can’t win ‘em all.

Her memoir was a very detailed book, sometimes a little too detailed for the average reader, and in setting out to write her memoirs, Ann must have wondered which audience she was writing for – a political audience or her celebrity fans. If anything she went for the former, but she sometimes had to explain things to her second audience which would sometimes leave the political audience feeling a little irritated. I remember discussing the possibility of her writing her memoirs with her in one of our theatre evenings and she seemed adamant she wouldn’t do it. “I don’t want a friendless old age,” was her get out clause. “Well, I said, you should do it if only to put it on the record for posterity, or do you want Michael Howard to do that for you?” A clinching argument!

It is often said that autobiography is a work of fiction about yourself. Not this one. Yes, it was at times a little self-serving, but I have never read an autobiography that isn’t. Including my own! When reading back her speech proposing herself for the Speakership she wrote:

“Re-Reading that speech again for the purposes of this book, I could not fault it.”

Maybe not, but if I had been her editor, that sentence wouldn’t have made the final cut. But that is to carp. All the political episodes she wrote about that I had first-hand knowledge of were described with total honesty and candour. She wasn’t afraid to admit her own failings or misjudgements, and she was also not afraid to dole out criticism to fellow MPs where they merited it – and even sometimes when they possibly didn’t. This was not a bitchy book, but it was not without its knifings. Michael Howard copped much of Ann’s ire, although she is not afraid to praise him at times too. But perhaps my favourite comment in the whole book is when she says she would happily fight in the trenches alongside Michael Howard…

“…knowing that he would never be cowardly in the face of the enemy or desert his fellow soldiers. The difficulty is that if the battle went wrong, he would immediately be looking for someone to court martial and shoot. Or perhaps just shoot.”

Straight between the shoulder blades!

In 2003, Ann sponsored my Conservative candidate application and also endorsed me on my North Norfolk application form, knowing full well I was gay. It mattered not a jot to her.

The first question I was asked in the North Norfolk candidate selection was on fox hunting. I didn’t exactly lie, but I didn’t tell the whole truth either. It ran something like this: “You are a close friend of Ann Widdecombe, do you share her views on fox hunting.” I replied to the effect of: “Just because I am friends with someone doesn’t mean I necessarily share their view on anything, and there are rather a lot of things Miss Widdecombe and I disagree about.” A classic politician’s answer. It was totally true but on the other hand didn’t tell the whole truth. I felt slightly grubby, but needs must and all that. Anyway, my non-answer didn’t hold me back and I topped the first round vote against 19 candidates.

In eighteen months I managed to restrict my attendance of the local hunt to a single occasion.

In May 2004, Ann Widdecombe came to north Norfolk, although she somehow came via the A1, having taken a wrong turning off the M25. I decided to take her to the Catholic shrine at Walsingham. I mean what else would you do with Ann Widdecombe? We then went back to the cottage for an hour before she was due at a fundraiser in North Walsham with local party members. John, being polite, asked her if there was anything he could get her. Ann rather astonished him by saying how she wouldn’t mind a plate of egg and chips prior to leaving for the dinner. I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t! Bear in mind this was about 6.45pm and the dinner started at 7.30! Bear in mind also that she had just appeared on Celebrity Fit Club, or as I called it, Fat Club. Being a true gentleman, I wouldn’t have mentioned it but Ann proceeded to tell every person she met about it. The dinner went well, and was a sellout. The only slightly awkward moment was when a woman asked Ann what she thought of gays. I think I ended up answering it for her.

I also remember incurring her wrath around this time. We’d been to one of our theatre evenings and I stayed at her south London flat as I had to appear on LBC the next morning with Sandi Toksvig. I recall telling Sandi about Ann’s very floral curtains and the colour of the duvet I had slept under. As I was speaking I thought maybe I should have kept these details to myself. When she found out, she was understandably furious and let me know it. 

In 2006, having lost disastrously in North Norfolk I applied for Ann Widdecombe’s seat of Maidstone, only a few miles from where I live in Tunbridge Wells. I was surprised when Ann told me she was standing down as she was a mere 62 at the time. She had already embarked on a media career and I told her I was worried that it would come to a grinding halt if she didn’t have the letters M and P after her name. I was wrong. What I also didn’t foresee was her political metamophormosis from ardent Ken Clarke supporter to diehard Nigel Farage supporter and Brexit Party MEP. Stranger and stranger, said Alice.

Although I was hopeful in Maidstone I feared that my friendship with Ann might count against me, as they would fear her being a backseat driver. There was little I could do about that. I was on the round one shortlist and despite doing my best ever selection speech and despite answering questions well, I wasn’t put through to the next round. However, Ann’s good friend Conor Burns did come second to the eventual winner, Helen Grant, so maybe that blows my theory out of the water.

A couple of years later, Ann told me she was buying a house on Dartmoor. I told her she was mad. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. I thought she would hate it, but she told me she wanted a peaceful retirement writing books with cats and dogs as company. She was perfectly happy in her own company and wanted a quiet life. It didn’t really turn out like that and the political bug still bit, as proved by her return to politics with the Brexit Party in 2019, when she stood for and won a seat in the European Parliament.

It was also in 2008 that John and I had our Civil Partnership. I wasn’t sure whether to invite Ann, given I knew her strong belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. I went ahead anyway, as she was a friend. Sure enough she declined on the basis that was going to be in Spain that weekend. Fair enough. However, her then secretary mistakenly copied me in on a reply to Ann in which she had told said secretary to let me down gently, as she didn’t want to upset me, but she couldn’t be seen at such an event. I was amused, if anything, and certainly not offended. When I told her a few years later I had seen the email, she was absolutely mortified.

Ann loved the cut and thrust of the political interview and I interviewed her many times over the years and we had some memorable exchanges. After one of the more robust interviews she phoned me and said why had I been so aggressive with her, I was supposed to be her friend. “I was only doing my job,” I replied. “Don’t take it personally!”. “I know,” she said.

Ann always said her favourite interviews were on Jonathan Dimbleby’s Sunday lunchtime show, in which he would interview her for an hour in front of a live audience.

I wonder what she would have made of a dream I once had in which I dreamt that Bill Cash had introduced a bill into the House of Commons to make Ann Widdecombe a princess. Make of that what you will.

I have completed this collection of memories at midnight on the night before Ann’s funeral at Buckfast Abbey in Devon. I started it on the day after she died. But I just couldn’t finish it. This seems the right time to publish it.

I do hope Ann’s views on heaven and the afterlife have turned out to be true. I hope I meet her there one day.