Hero Mike has a last-minute attack of modesty
Mike Whitby’s florid account of the resumption of production of MG sports cars at Longbridge – subtitled: how I single-handedly saved the Midland motor industry, made friends with the Chinese and rescued the Government from disaster – bore more than a passing resemblance to the efforts of another Tory wordsmith, Lord Jeffrey Archer.
A slight distancing from the facts, shall we say.
The city council leader certainly knows how to pen a fast, racy plot, full of larger than life characters.
Fine dining in expensive restaurants, our hero, the obvious man for a crisis, responds by ordering the chauffeur driven Jag here, there and everywhere, bearding the Prime Minister in his den, storming the BBC demanding to speak to the nation, and even shedding a manly tear with the families of sacked workers.
And, naturally, there are loads of villains, including supine journalists pedalling “whispers, gossip and rumour” and rival politicians with axes to grind.
Talking of which, Richard Burden’s withering put down of Whitby’s account – a triumph of ego over memory – ought to take pride of place in any handbook of Birmingham political quotations.
As Burden, the Labour MP for Northfield, correctly pointed out, there were a great many people involved in dealing with the aftermath of MG Rover’s collapse not least the Prime Minister and Chancellor, who visited Birmingham the day after the company went out of business.
Iron Angle can reveal that the original version of Whitby’s 2,000-word newspaper article was even more extraordinary.
It was not a good idea to begin by comparing the collapse of MG Rover with the assassination of President Kennedy and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as “news so stunning that it brings our entire world to a halt”.
I hear that the article was ghosted for Whitby by a freelance journalist.
It appears that Whitby’s minders had second thoughts about the triumphalist tone of the script, and even the great man himself suffered an attack of nerves hours before publication and at one stage wanted the article pulled.
As Sir Winston Churchill, who Whitby admits to greatly admiring, put it: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
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Not a good week for the department run by “Doctor” Mirza Ahmad, Birmingham City Council’s Chief Legal Officer.
In an episode bearing an uncanny resemblance to the classic don’t-tell-him-Pike episode of Dad’s Army, a hapless council solicitor managed to leak the name of the company involved in discussions about redeveloping Paradise Circus by stating that meetings were so top-secret that no notes were kept ... and all documents were returned to Argent afterwards.
Good grief Holmes, might be a bit of a clue there.
With Argent being a major Paradise Circus landowner, it hardly takes a combination of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple to assemble everyone involved in a country house, eliminate suspects one by one, before pronouncing: “So, ladies and gentlemen, the firm responsible for this hideous deed must be.....Argent.”
Of course, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen if the council dropped its paranoia when faced by Freedom of Information Act requests.
Meanwhile, on the subject of Mirza’s decision to call himself Doctor after receiving an honorary doctorate, I am grateful to correspondents who have pointed out that he is in good company.
Other recipients of such awards, who proceeded to put Dr before their first name, include Billy Graham, the American evangelist and rabble-rousing Ulster politician, Ian Paisley. Irish broadcaster Sir Terry Wogan often refers to himself on air, albeit deprecatingly, as Doctor.
But perhaps the most famous example of self-aggrandisement is that of Lichfield’s most famous son, Samuel Johnson, who failed for financial reasons to compete his studies at Pembroke College, Oxford, but was later awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of his academic achievements.
Which begs the question, if Mirza is Brum’s Dr Johnson, who plays the role of Boswell, his put-upon companion and butt of well-honed epigrams?
Iron Angle is open to suggestions, but council chief executive Stephen Hughes appears to fit the role perfectly.
