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The thin line between disgrace and £34bn. Happy days for BAE
• No one wins in war, they say, but this doesn't quite take into account the topsy-turvy fortunes of our friends at BAE Systems. Every strongman needs his arms. That's where BAE comes in. And things are all going very well for the company as it emerges from the nightmare of nonstop investigations over the £43bn al-Yamamah fighter plane sales to Saudi Arabia and smaller deals in central Europe. Also the light directed towards the highly controversial sale of a military radar to poverty-stricken Tanzania. In time, BAE admitted false accounting and making misleading statements in relation to allegations of corruption. But the allegations of corruption themselves, which were always strongly denied, were successfully rebuffed, and that has proved to be crucial. The company, if judged corrupt, would have been excluded from doing business with the US government, by dint of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. As things transpired, note Drury D Stevenson and Nicholas J Wagoner of the South Texas College of Law, who have examined the aftermath, in the 365 days that followed the payment of penalties worth £300m, BAE "was awarded roughly $58bn (£34bn) in government contracts." Relief all round. Nice work …
• But then everyone deserves a second chance. A third perhaps. So good it is of the National Trust to offer to one who fell another chance of rehabilitation. Visitors to Benjamin Disraeli's former home, Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire, are greeted by a familiar voice on the introductory tape. Writer, politico, perjurer: Lord Archer, yes, it's him. He is, the trust tells us, "a controversial figure" with many similarities to Disraeli: "two larger than life characters". Both were MPs, were ambitious, went bankrupt, used powers of persuasion and had the ability to manipulate. Only one, of course, honed his craft in prison. "He is a provocative figure and it is a well-established interpretative technique to use an element of provocation to present a controversial topic," the trust explains. And if he forgets his lines, Jeffrey can make it all up as he goes along.
• A heady week, with everyone a bit giddy. Why, even Dr Strangelove, aka defence secretary Liam Fox, is resorting to levity. Recently he went to Saudi, he told reporters, and signed a visitors' book. "I put 'Liam Fox, House of Commons, London'. Immediately above me was 'Blair, Jerusalem'." But then Blair was above everybody. We do worry about Fox sometimes. Wasn't it wrong of you to head for the pub during the Libya crisis, he was asked by the Mirror? But isn't that "a bit like asking Churchill if he regrets having a drink during world war two", Strangelove replied. To which the answer is, no!
• We suggested on Tuesday that Sir John Gielgud might have shared William Shatner's liking for working with directors of restricted growth. Gielgud had his idiosyncrasies, for sure, says correspondent Jonathan Croall, but competitive heightism was not one of them. "Putting down, not looking down, was his forte. As in his summing-up of Michael Winner, directing him in The Wicked Lady, as 'a mad nut … a restless maniac mixture of George Cukor, Harpo Marx and Lionel Bart'." Croall speaks from two knowledgeable positions. He is a Gielgud biographer, and many years earlier studied alongside Winner at school in Letchworth. In this, as in most things, he says, Gielgud had it about right.
• Finally, it is the big day and the man from Syria has been disinvited. But he won't be missed, for there are so many other guests worth talking about. The Yang di-Pertuan Agong and Raja Permaisuri Agong of Malaysia, the polygamous king of Swaziland, the king of Tonga. Space too for the archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. But his place might have been jeopardised yesterday by an interview he gave to the Telegraph and ITN noting his daughter's take on cohabitation: that "some people want to taste the milk before they buy the cow". He wasn't saying it, his publicists protested when ITN used the quote to publicise the interview. He was merely saying that his daughter said it. Perhaps he was. But, like bad milk, his media relations were soured by then.
