Vancouver Province
for December 3, 1999

London - December 3 Britain seems like a pretty stodgy place really - some sex scandals in the Sunday Tabs of course ... the occasional Lord caught in chains in a tart's room ... but mainly stodgy.

Well, folks, the entire country has stopped for a novelist made a life peer by John Major who for the umpteenth time got caught lying through his teeth.I know Jeffrey Archer pretty well - as well as one who has interviewed him perhaps a dozen times can know someone like Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare. I've been in his magnificent pad overlooking the Parliament buildings many times. I've met his wife, the lovely and brilliant Lady Mary.

I have received his generosity when a stolen purse left Wendy and me without credit cards, passports and cash.Archer's trouble is that he's a story teller 100% of the time. He has fibbed about where he went to school - the well known Wellington Public school for the small high school in Somerset with the same name. He told the world that his Dad was a war hero which was untrue and exaggerated beyond recognition his scholastic record at Oxford and on it goes.

With his outstanding success, his gift for prevarication, and a successful lawsuit he has pissed off the media - Big Time.The current fuss where every paper in town is calling for his scalp started in 1986 when the Star alleged that Jeffrey had had a dalliance with a lady of the night to whom he had, for obscure reasons, paid 2000 quid. Needing an alibi for a certain night Archer induced a friend to give one by way of a letter to his lawyer.

(It turned out - this plot as a novel would be hard to believe - that he didn't need it for the hooker, which was the previous night, but because he was dining with his lady assistant with whom he was having a torrid affair!) Archer received a jury award of 500,000 pounds mainly because the trial judge fell in love with Mary Archer as she gave evidence, in true Tammy Wynette fashion, for her man. The Media was not pleased.

Fast forward to 1999 and Archer is the Tory nominee for Mayor of London. The pal who wrote the letter for him tells all because Archer, at a party in front of his pal's lovely lady of recent acquaintance, alleged that the pal had stiffed him for 20,000 quid. In fact, said the snitcher, it was 12,000 and it was an investment. Like Watergate in its prime, each day brings a fresh revelation. Why? Because Archer is a larger than life character who's rubbed the media's nose in it. His public brashness began when, as an Oxford student he finagled the Beatles, who didn't do benefits, to do one for Oxfam.

In the 70s he became a very young Tory MP on the make who went broke after being bilked by a Canadian mining promoter then resigned from Parliament and wrote a book about his experiences called "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" which made him an instant millionaire. Along the way he married his stunningly beautiful and brilliant (she is a Cambridge Don) wife Mary.After that, Archer's life became a live soap opera for the British public. Everything he wrote made him unbelievable amounts of money.

Then he turned inside information given him by Mary about a television merger that turned him a fast 70,000 profit - a strange move for a man so rich but judgment has never been His Lordship's long suit.

He got away with it. Archer, the Tory's Tory became an intimate friend of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. When Tories needed money Archer promised big and delivered bigger.

As the Major government stumbled from scandal to another, Archer was ever supportive, always seen by the press leaving #10 in his chauffeured Daimler. He became Mr Tory Good Guy and was sent to the House of Lords as a reward.

Jeffrey Archer is a consummate liar who's gotten away with it. He's a successful cheat and as such, is a magnificent target for a media that feels cheated and would love to get even.Last week Lord Jeffrey Archer was finally caught out. He's out of the mayoralty race, dropped from the Tory caucus and may go to jail for counseling perjury.

The London media finally got even. Big Time.