Jeffrey Archer in Prison

There was a time when, heading to see Jeffrey Archer, you risked being crushed in the throng. At Christmas time the roadway outside the entrance to his London home was double-parked with Rollers and Mercs. Uniformed chauffeurs whiled away the hours while high above them their employers gazed down upon Parliament from Jeffrey;s riverside penthouse flat. Against a background of Andy Warhol images of Marilyn Monroe, Archer glided among the rich and famous offering shepherd’s pie and Krug (he was never content to call it merely champagne).

Everyone was pleased to be there, and happy to be seen to be there. On the way out, the building’s lobby was piled high with boxed Stilton cheeses, and each guest eagerly grabbed Jeffrey’s Christmas present on the way back to the limo.

As I drove for three-and-a-half hours through pouring rain, past Boston, Lincolnshire, and out across the remote plain that brings you to North Sea Camp, Jeffrey’s present abode, the roads were not choked with swanky cars headed to pay respect to the great author. The crowds have evaporated. Like bubbles reaching the surface of the Krug, they have vanished.

North Sea Camp looks run-down rather than forbidding. Long, single-storey huts bring to mind yearns about doing National Service, rather than archetypal images of incarceration. Jeffrey has traded in the silk wallpapers and dragged-paint finishes of Albert Embankment for grubby linoleum along long corridors and double-swing doors in scuffed brown or orange.

Jeffrey, who might has presided at a Linley desk in pale limed oak, now squats on a plastic chair at a Formica-covered table; and that is where I greet him.

I have never before seen him in anything other than what I assumed to be a suit from Savile Row. Now he wears a prison-issue grey fleece over a blue T-shirt. His feet were always graced by what I took to be Church’s black brogues. Now he wears trainers. But they are immaculate: high quality and brilliant white; and that provides my first clue that even inside, Jeffrey has mastered the system, or talked his way to the top.

With this in mind, I look around the room, a bleak canteen full of tables, each with one convict and up to three visitors. I am used to meeting Archer at London’s Le Caprice restaurant, where people would kill for a table and Jeffrey always had the one in the corner by the window. ‘Jeffrey’, I ask, raising my voice above the clatter of the inmates and their families, ‘are we sitting at the best table?’

Jeffrey roars with laughter, the eyes sparkle, and the voice is strong and authoritative. Nothing about his demeanour suggests that this is a man who has spent seven months inside. Baroness Nicholson suggested that Archer might have made off with the money given to a charity set up to help the Kurds. That eye-catching, but unsubstantiated, allegation won her ladyship 15 minutes of fame but cost Jeffrey six weeks of being locked up for most of everyday in a high-security cell instead of moving to an open prison.

Now he laughs, he jokes, he tells funny stories and he barks out his opinions. When he yells out, at the top of his lungs, ‘Michael, what I am about to tell you is a secret, between only you and me,’ before imparting something highly indiscreet, still at full blast, then I know that Jeffrey really is unchanged, and that this could after all be Le Caprice.

In the old days, when we met for lunch or dinner, Archer always paid. But prisoners have no money, so I must treat him. Prisons offer nothing with sun-dried tomatoes, nor anything with a drizzled walnut oil. I order tea and Kit-Kats for him, and corned beef sandwich for myself. On our table is a chit of paper on which we write our orders. It’s a practice I’ve only ever come across before in the most pompous of gentleman’s clubs. A waiter, beautifully turned out in hygienic catering gear – white lab coat and hat – collects the docket, takes my money, brings the change and delivers our order with impeccable efficiency and politeness. With equal conscientiousness he returns later to relieve us of the dirty crockery. Archer seems then to notice the waiter for the first time, and confides in me loudly: ‘You’d never guess he’s a double murderer!’

For a moment, a fantast crosses my mind: Jeffrey has got himself locked up merely to gain access to an unbeatable source of material for future novels. Behind bars, you don’t have to scratch your head for new characters and plots: they arrive fresh each morning by the prison-vanful. Those who though Archer could demonstrate his alchemy once more emerging from clink with a new bestseller typically underestimated their man. Expect a trilogy at least.

Prison teaches discipline. Our novelist rises at 5am to knock out a thousand words before 7am when his morning duties commence.

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare has been put in charge of the prison’s sick bay. The cleanliness of its Linoleum and the perfect folds of its bed linen are now the sole responsibility of my noble friend. It also means that he has, in effect, a large private room with eight beds and its bathroom to himself. The new trainers on his feet are not the only sign of a man whose wit has made the best of a bad job.

Yet for all that, going to prison is a bad job. Archer is sustained by sackfuls of fan mail and by a certainty that he has been falsely convicted. His Christmas card showed Mr Toad behind bars being visited by the washerwoman, and was signed simply ‘From Jeffrey and Mary’. Archer seems himself to acknowledge that there is in his self-delusion something reminiscent of the boastful Toad.

You don’t have to believe he is innocent in order to question the severity of his sentence. Had he been put away for the same time as Jonathan Aiken, Jeffrey would be freed tomorrow, Monday.

Whenever he is freed, Lord Archer will be changed. Prison probably isn’t affecting Jeffrey in the same way as it did Aiken. I visited him too, and he appeared to be coping as well as Jeffrey is now. But with hindsight I notice how all Jonathan’s conversation was of prison, while most of Archer’s is of the world outside. He won’t undergo a similar religious experience as Aiken’s. But he will emerge a crusader for prison reform and against the abuse of drugs.

Our prisons are awash with drugs, many prisoners are inside because of drugs, and when they are released it will be drugs again that cause many of them to lose their liberty.

Jeffrey is a formidable campaigner who will go on the stump against drugs. He’s just the sort of orator whose tirades could influence a young audience.

When Jeffrey is freed, and the smell of shepherd’s pie once more fills the air above the Thames and the Krug bottles noisily slip their corks, it will be interesting to see how many of the chauffeured limousines return to Albert Embankment, how many hands reach out to grasp the Stiltons.

Archer may, according to your taste, be a hero or a mountebank and rogue. But when he eventually reaches the Pearly Gates, he will look back on an existence that was anything but dull. That is a privilege not given to many. And the book with the most audacious plot of all has yet to be written: The Extraordinary Life of Jeffrey Archer.