Death of Jeffrey Archer.

 

I always considered Jeffrey Archer a prat and an embarrassment.

As a child his mother nicknamed him 'Tuppence'. He led a scandalous life leading to a period of imprisonment for perjury, but he was no Oscar Wilde. Throughout his life there were allegations of lies, dodgy and beefed-up CVs, theft, bankruptcy and embezzlement of charity funds and plagiarism. A play that he wrote for the stage, was said to bear a striking resemblance to a play written by Agatha Christie. Dishonesty seemed to run in his family. His elderly father who died when he was 15, had convictions for fraud and bigamy.

He seems to have become a successful writer very quickly, which is very unusual. When friends told him that he should forget the idea of becoming an author, because he couldn't spell or write properly, he replied that he could tell stories. That was probably right because much of what he said about himself was a total invention. He supposed to have sold 300 million books, but I haven't read one them and have no intention of doing so. They say that he was often rude and demeaning to people who he thought were his social inferiors. Apparently, most of the sales staff at Harper Collins, detested him.

Ringo Star met him while visiting Oxford University. Archer had been fund raising for a charity and had managed to persuade the Beatles to come along to an event. Ringo asked Sheridan Morley who Archer was and he said none of us really know. Ringo told him that he thought Archer seemed a nice bloke, but he thought that he was the type of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it.