Blonde ambition by Kevin Widdop

Published in Leeds Student on 04/02/05

A handful of bibliophiles have come to see the closest

thing to a celebrity Border's could enlist this week.

Starting with a preamble before reading excerpts from

her new book, Father Figure, Ann Widdecombe fights off

ostensibly irritating questions about whether her

position has helped boost her book sales: "People say

you're only doing well because of your name and all

this but I've wanted to be a novelist since I was

six-years-old," she says unsentimentally.

Her two previous books, The Clematis Tree and An Act

of Treachery, both about familial discord, were

bestsellers. Such are her caustic views on anything

faintly promiscuous or risqué wed with the serious and

grey subject matter that are her books, I wonder if

she is a pessimist? "No, no, no, no, no, no," she

clarifies. "I don't have a pessimistic view of life.

But I do have a realistic view and not all situations

turn out well."

Such as her departure from the shadow cabinet back in

2001, I suggest. Any regrets about how it turned out?

"None what-ev-er", stressing every syllable. What

about

not going into a leadership challenge with Iain Duncan

Smith? "I would have liked to have gone for the

leadership. I couldn't. It wasn't that I decided I

didn't want to after all and it was a bad idea. I

couldn't actually get the support at Westminster

necessary to contend. It's no good brooding about

things. No regrets. None," her voice rising a

staccato.

Her petite size and distinctive, tilting gait belie

her fierce and take-no-prisoners demeanour. Answers as

succinct as they are forthrightly delivered, she says

of her status as a politician: "It's been both a plus

and a minus. It's been a minus in so far as the

critical reviews have gone until this time. They've

either been favourable or mixed. Reviewers who've

reviewed the fact that I've written a book have

generally been unfavourable." Perhaps Widdecombe is

nodding to a review by Edwina Currie, John Major's

former mistress, who derided The Clematis Tree for its

lack of sex. Although this may have had something to

do with Currie's Diaries knocking about the depths of

the book charts at the time.

Father Figure's protagonist, Jason, works at the

failing and beleaguered secondary school Morton's.

Widdecombe - who has no children and if she did

probably

wouldn’t attend a Morton’s - says she experienced such

a school in her time as Shadow Home Secretary. “It was

in Hull. It was obviously a school in which teachers

had given up, virtually no aspiration amongst the

children. If you said to the children, what do you

wanna be when you leave? They wouldn't have a clue.

They would shrug: ‘Naah’,” she says, contorting her

face to that of an ignorant adolescent. "Teachers are

not there to promote shrugs. They're there to enthuse,

inspire. But I certainly have no Morton's in my

constituency – I wouldn't tolerate one, I can tell

you."

This political intolerance is typical of the

old-school Tories: Howard, Letwin, Davies et al. But

will this hard line be transferred into votes at the

election? "I think we've done rather well with the

recent tax announcements [£5bn cuts] and we've

actually been taken seriously. I think there's been a

change. I think people are very disillusioned with

Blair and they're now at least willing to look at us.

At the moment we've got an answer for everything," she

says critically. "Three or four policies like this,

just bang home those messages and I see no reason at

all why people shouldn't vote for us."

With an education as diverse and rich as her political

career (elected to Parliament in 1987, serving as

Shadow Health, State and Home Secretary), attending

The Royal Naval School in Singapore, Widdecombe says

she writes on very long train journeys travelling home

and derives inspiration from “nowhere” but her

imagination. Whether this is a comment on said

imagination, however, remains unclear.

Yet despite her success as novelist and TV personality

on ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club, she still retains one

unabated passion. "I'm a politician.” Scoffing at the

idea that she could be anything else, I suggest that

perhaps a published author and, and...“Look, Fit Club

takes three hours on a Saturday afternoon,” she states

adamantly. “The rest of the week is politics. I would

need to be Superwoman to do them altogether."

And that moniker may well be bestowed upon her by the

activist group Fathers 4 Justice. Batman and Robin

even showed up to the publishing party. So relevant is

the subject matter of a father being denied access to

his children that Widdecombe moved publication

forward. But does she support such actions as scaling

the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace? "No,

I'm a democratic politician, so I can't. The

comparison I brought was with the suffragettes. Of

course it was totally wrong to bring themselves under

the King's horse. It put the jockey at risk, it put

the other riders at risk, it certainly put their own

lives at risk. It didn't half put the case on the

map," she says definitively.

Still sporting her blond cut and with something of a

cult following, she remains one of the most prominent

members in the party. So what constitutes a successful

third novel for this colourful Conservative? "It's

obviously lovely to see your books in the bestseller's

list. No author is going to say it's not. But the real

satisfaction from writing a book comes from the fan

mail. People writing in and saying, 'it kept me up all

night', 'as soon as I finished it I had to start it

again', 'it made me cry'. That is where the real

satisfaction comes from, that is what you just love to

read."

While some critics have savaged her wooden prose

style, I wonder if she has been inspired by any

novelist in particular? “I read so widely it's almost

impossible to say, so widely," she says modestly. "If

you look at the collection of books on my bedside

table, I've got Ruth Rendell 'Thirteen Steps Down';

I've got a book I've just finished on The Mathematics

of Coincidence'; I've got 'The Best of Garfield', and

I've got Tom Holland's 'Rubicon', and I prefer it that

way because I wouldn't like to find myself writing in

the style of another author."

What about the controversial Brown's Britain by Robert

Peston? "I probably will read it, but it's a long way

down my list." And the Blair/Brown rift? "I'm not

interested. Half of Asia has just been submerged and

we talk about what Blair said to Brown and what Brown

said to Blair and when.” Exasperated, she adds: “I

mean, REALLY. I just want to say, grow up everybody."

Her next book, The Idealist, "is a story of two

politicians, one Brit, one African, who start off with

huge ideals and the way that they are modified by the

practicalities of power." Now, if they were two Brits,

it might sound a bit like...