22.05.21
M AGA ZINE OF THE Y EA R
ZEN AND THE ART OF SCORING
Stacey Abrams: the woman who swung it for the president JUST ASK JOE BIDEN By Jane Mulkerrins
Is Gareth Bale the most chilled striker in the game? By Ben Machell
CAITLIN MORAN Everything I thought about myself is wrong
22.05.21 20
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7 Caitlin Moran I’m a Pisces in sheep’s clothing. 9 Spinal column: Melanie Reid Now it’s my turn to nurse my husband. 12 Cover story Gareth Bale He’s one of the world’s highest paid footballers, but the Spurs and Real Madrid star avoids the limelight. 20 ‘I am not broken; I’m autistic’ Holly Smale on the diagnosis that helped her make sense of her lifelong struggle to “fit in”. 26 Team Tom Kerridge The chef on his new cookbook, surviving the pandemic and his partnership with Marcus Rashford. Plus Eat! 33 Recipes from Kerridge’s barbecue bible. 38 Dom’s revenge When Dominic Cummings turned on Boris Johnson, it was no surprise to those in the know. What will he reveal when he is grilled by MPs this month? 44 Woman on the verge Stacey Abrams helped smooth Joe Biden’s path to the White House. Now she’s being talked about as a future president herself. 50 Inside the Post Office scandal The sub-postmasters falsely accused of theft tell Rachel Sylvester how their lives were ruined. 56 Shop! Get a pleated skirt. 57 Beauty Lesley Thomas loves Zara’s cosmetics range. 60 Giles Coren reviews Kol, London. 66 Beta male: Robert Crampton I do like a keepsake.
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EDITOR NICOLA JEAL DEPUTY EDITOR LOUISE FRANCE ART DIRECTOR CHRIS HITCHCOCK ASSOCIATE EDITOR JANE MULKERRINS ASSISTANT EDITOR TONY TURNBULL FEATURES EDITOR MONIQUE RIVALLAND CHIEF SUB-EDITOR AMANDA LINFOOT DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR JO PLENT DEPUTY CHIEF SUB-EDITOR CHRIS RILEY PICTURE EDITOR ANNA BASSETT DEPUTY PICTURE EDITOR LUCY DALEY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR BRIDGET HARRISON EDITORIAL ASSISTANT GEORGINA ROBERTS
The Times Magazine 5
CAITLIN MORAN
Am I empathetic and generous? Maybe I thought I was a typical Aries. Not that I believe this stuff…
ROBERT WILSON
B
ecause we all now live in silos, or bubbles, we can sometimes find ourselves reacting to “news” that other people knew about ages ago. My most pertinent moment of this was receiving a text from one of my sisters, in 2010, asking, “Hey, whatever happened to that Barry Obama guy?” She’s a reiki healer in Margate and doesn’t believe in “The Man’s time”, so I often get texts like this. It took a while to realise she meant Barack Obama. I was able to tell her that he had won the election and become president. “Oh, good for Barry,” she replied. “Nice one.” Before adding later, “Which country?” In a similar way, it was only last week that I was alerted to massive breaking news from 2020: that all our zodiac signs are wrong. Obviously it was my reiki sister who told me this: “Mind. BLOWN,” she texted. According to the year-old story in a tabloid, the Earth’s wobble has shifted the relative position of the constellations, which means all our horoscope signs have now changed. At first, I did not think this was news that affected me. “Well, I don’t believe in astrology anyway,” I told my sister – and then added, “Which is, of course, very Aries of me. We’re very sceptical.” “But you’re NOT an Aries,” she texted back. “That’s the thing! I looked it up! April 5? You’re actually a PISCES now, dude.” And it was at this point that I realised I must believe in astrology. Deep down. Because I was utterly horrified by the notion that I was a Pisces. I’d always been quietly proud that I was Aries, the Ram – first sign of the zodiac, ambitious, pioneering, cheerful, determined, naturally inclined to look good in knitwear. The downsides of the Ram – brashness, selfobsession, a tendency to get mucky around the bumhole and needing to be shorn, in spring, by an expert – I was at peace with. To suddenly find, at the age of 46, that I was now a Pisces was unexpectedly disconcerting. “What even is a Pisces?” I fretted. “Some mysterious fish? I’m not a mysterious fish.” Because Aries don’t believe in astrology and are also self-obsessed, I’d never bothered researching what other astrological signs are like – so I had to google for the full Pisces lowdown. “Incredibly creative, empathetic,
Pisces are ‘incredibly creative and very impressionable’. Man, this is ringing bells generous – but also very impressionable.” Suddenly, cogs were whirring. Man, maybe there was something in this, after all. This was all ringing bells. Incredibly creative? Obvs. Empathetic? I once cried at a sad squirrel in an advert. Generous? Oh man, all I do is give. My Deliveroo tips are £4, minimum. And as for “impressionable”? Well, my friend once bought a “Monkey see, monkey do” T-shirt – and I bought the exact same one the day after. Monkey saw, monkey did. That’s double impressionable. Bloody hell!
I am a Pisces! A Pisces in sheep’s clothing! “Maybe this has been the root of all my problems,” I told my husband later. We were walking the dog in the rain while sharing a Twirl, because middle age is full of hedonism like this. “I’ve had all these Pisces feelings but have had to ignore them – because I was misassigned Aries at birth! I’ve been brutally severed from my real identity my entire life!” “Harsh,” Pete said, in a way that suggested he wanted the conversation to end. Then, sadly, looking at his chocolate, “The rain’s got down the Twirl-holes.” “As the only Aries in the family, you know how my sisters used to bully me for being a ‘stupid smelly sheep’,” I continued, ignoring him. “I was the literal black sheep of the family. And they would lord it over me, because they were Virgo and Aquarius, and thought themselves superior, like Virgo and Aquarius do. Maybe that’s why I have all this pain, deep inside.” “Do you have pain, deep inside?” “Apparently, Pisces always do,” I said confidently. “They bottle stuff up. We. We bottle stuff up.” “I’ve never noticed you bottle stuff up,” Pete replied, mildly. “You’ve always seemed quite chatty, sadness-wise.” “That’s because I was bottling it up!” I replied, high on revelation. I was then struck by something else. “AARGH! Swimming! You know I love swimming! And drinking water! It’s because I was Pisces all along! God, this changes everything.” By that evening, I was deep into my Pisces identity. Not least when I found out that Pisces love sleeping – yet hate violence and cruel behaviour. “So true,” I murmured. “The thing about me is, I’ve always thought wars were bad.” I then noted the time: “Oh! 11pm! Better get to sleep – because I’m a Pisces! Gotta get my fishy sleep! Time for some fish-dreams! Oh, I finally feel like everything’s fallen into place, now I know I’m Pisces.” The next morning, I woke to find a text from my reiki sister. “Ixnay on the new zodiac stuff, dude,” it read. “Apparently it’s all balls. The information was wrong. You’re still an Aries, after all.” “Well that’s good,” I replied, “because, obviously, Aries don’t believe in all this bollocks anyway.” n The Times Magazine 7
SPINAL COLUMN MELANIE REID
‘Dave is a drama queen about his eye op. I’m content to be a nurse: he has bottomless credit to draw on’
MURDO MACLEOD
‘A
nd don’t forget to ask for a sedative,” I yelled out of the car window as my husband headed for the hospital entrance. He was so tense, strung to snapping point. Dave is not a good patient. He’s allergic to doctors and ill health of any kind. His body is a temple, sacred and undefilable. The thought of subjecting it to a surgeon’s knife morally offends him. Or, as our Irish friend Liz told him, “You’re a total wendy.” There are apparently 400,000 cataract surgeries carried out every year in the UK and Dave’s surgeon had done at least 16,000. But for a man “with eyes like an eagle” (his quote) this has been a testing time and I have been on my best sympathetic behaviour for several weeks now, soothing and reassuring. Things went OK, thank goodness. He needed someone able-bodied to bring him home – his son Steve stepped in – but I knew he was fine as soon as he asked me whether he suited the eye patch. The relief he felt was intoxicating, and he was soon spinning tales of the goodlooking nurse who’d made a beeline for him and a ghastly octopus-like thingy coming down and sucking at his eye at one point. “How many diazepam did they give you?” I asked suspiciously. That’s the thing about Dave. He’s an incorrigible drama queen. He will dine out on
his experiences as if he’s had the rarest op in the world, not the most common. He reminds me of those women who, when they noticed you were pregnant, trapped you in a corner and insisted on sharing their terrifying childbirth and near-death story. I remember being captured in the toilets at work by a woman I hardly knew who gave me a full-on description of her 18-hour labour, haemorrhaging and emergency surgery which left me clutching my belly, pale and terrified. In fairness I have to say his first night wasn’t fun when the anaesthetic wore off and he woke in great pain, his eye gummed up. In the middle of the night the spectres tug at your brain and everything is magnified tenfold. There was a certain spectacular bathos in our situation. I’m unable to get out of bed and the only emergency solace I could offer was what I could rake up with my right hand from my cluttered bedside table. Like a professional bartender in wartime, I whipped up the best painkilling/sleeping combo cocktail I could: two paracetamol, a big ibruprofen and half a clonazepam tablet. I spared him the laxative and the Strepsils. Then, deciding distraction was probably the best therapy, I spent the next two hours reading him stories from the Daily Mail on my phone. It worked – he was asleep, thankfully, before I got to the football section. And personally I think I deserve a medal for that last bit. In the morning, once I’d gingerly ungummed
his eye with sterile warm water, he was fine. The pain was gone. He put on dark glasses and I circulated a picture of him to the family. Roy Orbison, said Doug. Pirate Jack, said Steve. Jack Nicholson, said Debbie, his daughter-in-law. Since he heard that last one, he’s never taken the glasses off. Even that first morning, he was amazed how sharp his vision was, how bright the colours. And day by day it’s got sharper and brighter, to the point where he’s started remarking on how poor his other eye is. Words don’t quite describe my relief that it’s been a success, and I am content to be a full-time nurse, cook and gofer. He has bottomless credit to draw on in that particular bank. There are the eye drops to administer five times a day for up to a month, a procedure which I suspect we will become really slick at just before it’s time to stop. He lies on the sofa; I nag him to open his eyes wider – “C’mon, even wider!” – and juggle, grip and squeeze the droplet bottles as best I can, and he is blissfully unaware how close my tetraplegic fingers come to dropping them into his eyeball. Because we’re self-isolating until his other cataract op next week, friends are bringing papers and provisions, walking the dog. Roll on ten days, he’ll be able to go to the pub and show off his new eyes. n @Mel_ReidTimes Melanie Reid is tetraplegic after breaking her neck and back in a riding accident in April 2010 The Times Magazine 9
‘I WAS NEVER FUSSED ABOUT MY PRICE TAG. I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A NORMAL PERSON’
Gareth Bale celebrates scoring for Real Madrid against Espanyol in the Spanish league, January 2015
Gareth Bale is the £85 million Spurs and Real Madrid star who earns £600,000 a week. He’s also the teetotal family man from Cardiff who married his childhood sweetheart, prefers golf to glitz and refuses to be fazed by fame. Ben Machell meets him
Bale photographed at Rowbots, his new fitness studio, by Robert Wilson
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: DANI POZO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES
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meet Gareth Bale in a new fitness studio he’s opened, housed on a quiet London street where the hipster playground of Shoreditch ends and the sheer glass and steel of the City begins. A confluence of youth from one direction and money from the other, it is, I suppose, as appropriate a place as any to interview a 31-year-old who earns £600,000 a week. He arrives about 45 minutes behind schedule – which, as footballers go, is honestly not that bad – and with minimal fanfare: no retinue, no selfies, no princely air at all. The only person with him is his agent, an unobtrusive man in a gilet who stays beside him and taps away at his phone. The gym is called “Rowbots”, on account of the fact that all the classes involve rowing machines. We take a seat in a reception area. Bale wears a fitted grey tracksuit and has his hair done up in what has become a familiar man bun, but he is neither tattooed nor visibly bejewelled. In fact, if you didn’t happen to know that he is one of the most successful football players of the past decade, he could pass for any number of young men from this part of town. A graphic designer. A personal trainer. An IT whizz for an investment bank. In September 2013, Real Madrid paid Tottenham Hotspur £85 million for Bale, making him what was then the world’s most expensive footballer. Over the next seven seasons, the Welsh forward helped his team win a tremendous amount including, most strikingly, four Champions League titles in five years. In the 2018 final against Liverpool, he came off the bench to score two goals – including a sensational overhead strike – which saw him named man of the match. Add to all this some league titles, a winning goal in a Spanish Cup final and a fair amount of other assorted silverware, and you might assume that, in Madrid, his legend is assured. Only it’s not quite that simple. Bale has spent much of this season on loan back at Tottenham, having found first-team opportunities under coach Zinedine Zidane limited to practically nil. And though he is under contract at Real until the end of next season, when he discusses his time in Madrid, it is almost always in the past tense. “There were some highs and lows,” he admits. And the more he talks, in a steady South Wales baritone, the more you get the sense that, for all his success, he knows that he is not a player who was ever fully understood or accepted in Spain. Usually in interviews you hope that the person in front of you will reveal themselves to you by talking about who they are. Today, Bale sheds just as much light on his character by talking about who he is not. “The thing in Madrid is that they expect you to be this galáctico,” he begins, using the term that serves as a shorthand for the
14 The Times Magazine
Aged 17, lining up for Wales in a friendly against Brazil
Playing for Southampton against Derby County, 2007
glittering superstars brought to Real for staggering fees, everyone from Luis Figo to David Beckham to Cristiano Ronaldo. “They expect you to do all the same things they’ve seen other players do. And I probably wasn’t the same as most of them. I liked to keep myself to myself, whereas a lot of people like to go out and not necessarily show off, but kind of build their brand in a certain way. They go to red-carpet events. Whereas I was never really like that. I wanted to play football, then go home and be a normal person.” Bale, it may help to understand, seems to possess a character that is almost geologically
Scoring his first goal in Real Madrid’s 3-1 win over Liverpool in the 2018 Champions League final
stable. His manner in the flesh is measured and self-contained. He is – and has always been – teetotal. He met his wife, Emma, at school in Cardiff. They’ve been together ever since and now have three children. He claims that despite his haul of medals he never really sets himself particular long-term goals beyond playing as well as he can in each season. And for someone involved in a sport that is so charged with emotion and drama, Bale seems strikingly rational and, over the course of our time together at least, appears to have full mastery of his ego. He remembers the first time he was “whistled” in Madrid – being jeered and catcalled by his own fans for some perceived shortcoming or other – and feeling puzzled. “I didn’t know how to deal with it,” he says. “And then once it had happened I had to think, ‘How can I deal with that better, even though maybe the fans or the team aren’t too happy with my performance? How can I make it not affect me as much? So that I’m still able to perform at a high level even though I’m getting criticism?’ ” In other words, to Bale the whistling was not something to feel upset about or wounded by. He simply wanted to make sure it did not affect his on-pitch output the next time it happened. Similarly, when I ask him if being the world’s most expensive player was ever a source of angst, he just shakes his head. “I never was fussed about the price tag,” he says. “Some people will really struggle under the pressure of thinking how much they cost and the feeling they have to prove themselves. But I always felt like the price tag had nothing to do with me. It was to do with two businesses agreeing over a kind of asset.”
Celebrating with the Wales team in 2019. The flag upset his club, Real Madrid
‘THE THING IN MADRID IS THAT THEY EXPECT YOU TO BE THIS GALÁCTICO… I WAS NEVER REALLY LIKE THAT’ But in Madrid, this was not the kind of personality large sections of the fans – and media – were used to. And Bale, for his part, was not prepared for the degree of goldfishbowl scrutiny he would find himself under. “In Spain, football is very magnified. Everything you do at Real Madrid is magnified. The media have cameras on you 24/7,” he says, chuckling softly. “In training. Watching every move that you do. So that takes some getting used to.” It made living a normal life almost impossible. Simply going for dinner would result in a scrum of fans and more cameras. “If I wanted to go out with friends or family, I’m going to end up with 20, 30 people around me and not being able to move. So you’ve got to find your spots in Madrid where you’re not hassled very much,” he says. “It’s difficult to do. But it’s something you have to learn quickly, otherwise it does get on top of you.” The problem was that Bale’s lack of extroversion – or at least his unwillingness to engage in the celebrity circus at one of the world’s most glamorous clubs – irritated some sections of the Spanish media. “It probably came across to them in a way they didn’t like. And I know for sure that the media in Spain were not very happy with that. But I’m not going to change for anyone,” he says. “I’m not going to let the media change my life or what I do. I know I probably got a bit more stick because of that. And I accepted that.”
With Real Madrid head coach Zinedine Zidane, 2016
There were persistent reports in the press that Bale had not even bothered to learn Spanish. This, he says, is simply not true. “I speak well enough to get by and I understand everything that’s going on.” The reason the press were upset, he continues, was not that he couldn’t speak Spanish. “It was because I didn’t speak to them. And I didn’t speak to them in Spanish,” he says. “So they obviously create this big drama, this big soap opera that I can’t do this and I can’t do that.” If you’re reading this and suspect that Bale is perhaps overplaying the Spanish football media’s propensity for stirring up drama, then
you can always go online and see for yourself. Bale and I meet the day after Real Madrid were knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea. In the aftermath of the game, Real’s Eden Hazard was briefly caught on camera sharing a joke with some of the Chelsea players, who happen to be former team-mates of his. It was innocent enough but, within hours, a Spanish TV news clip reporting the incident had gone viral. They somehow made it seem that Hazard had committed some kind of war crime, opening with a huge grainy still of his laughing face soundtracked by ominous music before slowly panning to a grave-faced presenter who simply stared at the camera in silent disgust. The whole thing was so over the top as to be hilarious. “I’ve seen it,” says Bale. “It was literally as if he’d just murdered everybody. It’s a game of football at the end of the day.” Bale had been a prodigious talent at schoolboy level, and his PE teacher in Cardiff would only allow him to play football against other children if he agreed not to use his favoured left foot, and would penalise him if he did so. “My target was to become a professional footballer. I had no back-up plan.” His father, Frank, was a school caretaker and his mother worked as an operations manager. Despite his promise, he says that he was never pushed beyond what he was comfortable with. “When I was travelling a lot to play in the youth team for Southampton, my dad always said to me, ‘If you’re ever not happy and you don’t want to do this, we never have to do it,’ ” he says. “That’s how my parents brought me up. And I’m applying that to my kids now.” The Times Magazine 15
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Bale made his professional debut for his first club, Southampton, in 2006, at the age of 16, and moved to Spurs the following year. In London, after an uncertain start he began to build a reputation as a dynamic left-sided defender. After a few seasons he moved into midfield. And then, from around 2010, something happened: Bale began to emerge as a seriously dangerous attacker. Tall and naturally athletic, he caught the attention of the football world with his explosive pace, power in the air and increasing prolificacy in front of goal. He scored a hat-trick against Inter Milan in the Champions League, eviscerating the reigning European champions’ experienced defence with his speed and physicality. Did Bale know, on some level, that an opportunity to establish himself as a world-class player was there, should he wish to reach for it? Does he look back on this period and remember thinking, “I can go all the way if I want to”? The short answer is, “No.” The slightly longer answer is that Bale simply didn’t think in those terms, because to do so is simply to invite pressure. “And I still don’t today. I honestly don’t think about what I can become. I’m always in the present, in the current season. I’m never thinking, ‘In two seasons’ time I could be scoring this amount or winning this or that,’ ” he says. It’s a cliché, he admits, to talk about taking it “a game at a time”, but then that’s genuinely how he approaches things. In any case, it worked. Real Madrid wanted him and, as is so often the way, they eventually got him. Leaving the UK and, specifically, easy access to his home in Cardiff was a “sacrifice”. Bale really adores Wales, and misses it when he’s away. “I’d love to be back in Cardiff seeing friends and family every day, going out for meals with them, having a coffee or going to play golf with them,” he says. He is still mates with the same people he was mates with at school, which seems very important to him. “To my friends and family, I’m just me. I’m not the footballer everyone knows. I’m just a normal guy who is treated the same as everybody else.” His passion for Wales – and the evident pleasure he takes in playing for his national side – has long been a stick to beat him with back in Spain. The former Real Madrid player and sporting director Predrag Mijatovic once said he had the impression that Bale’s priorities were Wales, golf and Madrid, in that order. Bale does love golf – he’s had three of the world’s most famous holes recreated in his garden, so there’s hardly any point in denying it. I grew up, I say, with players like Paul Gascoigne and Diego Maradona, men whose methods of dealing with the pressure of stardom were self-destructive in the extreme. Compared with that, 18 holes now and then hardly seems like a deadly sin. “It’s a nice way to get away from everything,” he says, as
‘ALL I WORRY ABOUT IS WHAT MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS THINK. WHATEVER FANS WANT TO SAY? BE MY GUEST’
Bale’s wife, Emma, and children Alba and Axel, March 2019
though somehow now honour-bound first to explain and then defend the concept of “golf”. “To get away from the hustle and bustle of my life in football and just relax. Have fun with my friends on a golf course and only be thinking about getting a little white ball into a hole.” It probably hasn’t helped that over the course of his time at Real Madrid, Bale spent a fair amount of time sidelined with various injuries. It may be that his blockbusting style of play simply increases the possibility of wear and tear. But fans were not happy when, in 2015, he picked up an injury playing for Wales in a dead-rubber fixture against Andorra – Wales had already qualified for Euro 2016. They certainly weren’t happy when, on securing qualification for Euro 2020, a Wales fan handed Bale a national flag with the words “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In That Order” emblazoned across it and he and his national team-mates held it up in celebration. It was tongue-in-cheek – it was funny! – but still, not exactly an olive branch to an already hostile media. Though, as he says, he was never going to try to mollify them by pretending to be someone he is not. “At least I know in myself that I didn’t change,” he says. Because of his squeamishness about celebrifying himself, Bale rarely does endorsement deals: no campaigns for fashion labels or aftershaves or outsized designer watches. He is, however, keen to extol the benefits of Rowbots, which pitches itself as a “mindset-led experimental fitness brand”. The classes on offer, he says, focus as much on mental resilience as physical exertion. Now that he’s into his thirties he tries hard to keep himself in shape between football seasons. “I’m looking after my body as best I can in the off season. When I was younger, I wasn’t really doing too much. Probably just being a slob,” he says, grinning. “Now I work out rather than just resting. I do a lot of Rowbots in the summer to keep myself fit.”
Even though Bale is not what you might call an oversharer, he says it’s good that a growing number of young footballers today seem at ease taking on issues that matter to them, whether that’s Marcus Rashford campaigning on child poverty or any number of others speaking out about racism. “There’s been a big shift,” he says. Along with several other players, in 2019 Bale contributed to a BT Sport documentary about mental health within the game. At the start of his career, he says today, opening up in any way would have been almost unthinkable. “I think the old-school way was not to talk about your feelings, not to talk about your emotions. The manly thing to do was just to crack on and get on with things,” he says. “My dad used to play a lot of rugby when he was younger, and that generation are very kind of stubborn and don’t want to talk about things. But at the same time, if they’re suffering, maybe they wouldn’t have to suffer as much inside if they were able to talk.” Bale has lost a brother-in-law to suicide and Gary Speed, the former Wales manager, also took his own life, which is perhaps why Bale speaks so positively – and at some length – on the subject of footballers talking about their mental health. “I think it’s helping a lot of people, not just in sport, but in general life. It’s helping them to speak and I guess it’s saving lives as well, because people can get to certain points where maybe they don’t want to be here. And those kind of small details about being able to speak to someone without being judged are helping a lot of people around the world.” It’s time for Bale to go off and be photographed on a rowing machine. He still has another year left on his contract with Real Madrid. “But in terms of my future, I haven’t really looked past the Euros to be honest,” he says. “I try not to look too far ahead.” I ask him, given everything he has won, how he would hope to be remembered. He smiles as though I’ve not really been listening. “I have no say in it,” he says with a shrug, which, now that I think about it, is probably his way of saying, “I don’t really care.” “People will have their own opinions,” he finishes. “But all I’m worried about is my opinion of myself, my family’s opinion of me and my friends’ opinions of me. Whatever fans and other people want to say? Be my guest. As long as I know the truth of what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved in football, then I’m very happy.” n Gareth Bale’s Rowbots studio is open (rowbots.co.uk)
The Times Magazine 17
I’VE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM – AT 39
Holly Smale
I’M HAPPY. FINALLY, MY LIFE MAKES SENSE Holly Smale, the bestselling author of the Geek Girl series, has sold more than three million books but she’s never felt like she fits in. She gives talks on stage to thousands, but has never had a serious relationship. Now she thinks she knows why PORTRAITS Dan Kennedy STYLING Hannah Rogers
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’d been lying under a blanket on my sofa for more than six hours, sobbing. It wasn’t an unfamiliar situation – these “dramatic fits” had been happening since I was a girl. This time it was all because I’d attempted to flirt with a TV presenter on Hinge. Flirting requires a delicate verbal and emotional dance that I have always been incapable of. By the time a man I had never met told me I lacked empathy, was clearly broken and had put him off online dating for ever, my self-loathing had knocked me out. The next day, I walked into my therapist’s office and sat down. “How are you today?” she asked, as she has every week for three years. “I think I might be autistic,” I replied. When I stopped crying, I saw the expression on her face. “How long have you known?” I asked her. “About three years,” she replied. It had never occurred to me before. I’m a bestselling children’s author. I’ve sold three and a half million books. I have an MA in Shakespeare and was briefly a spectacularly unsuccessful fashion model. I’ve backpacked solo through dozens of countries, given talks on stage to thousands, done countless TV and radio interviews. I have friends. I go to the pub. Now and then I even attempt to date. Sure, I’ve physically run away from gigs that are “too noisy”, I hold my own thumbs for comfort and have never had a serious romantic relationship. But autistic? I didn’t recognise any of the characteristics I’d seen on television. I’m terrible at maths; I like trains, but only because they carry me somewhere interesting. More importantly, I’m 39 years old. Wouldn’t somebody have said something by now? People had spent my entire life calling me names; surely one of them would have stumbled on the right one? “You’re nearly 40,” a GP agreed sharply a few days later, when I asked what the official diagnostic procedure might be for an adult. “You’re not autistic. That’s the kind of thing that would have been picked up at school.” Except it wasn’t. I was a “gifted” child: reading fluently by four and writing heroic couplets in iambic pentameter by six. I was either hyperverbal – talking in unbroken monologue with the stiff, formal vocabulary of a tiny Jane Austen heroine – or totally silent. I now know I’m hyperlexic (the opposite of dyslexic), but at the time I was “just a very clever little girl”. Those two things – my cleverness and my gender – were essentially what threw everybody off the scent. A rigid following of rules and regulations and a need for structure were me being “a good girl”. Extreme distress at anything “dirty” was just my femininity exerting itself. A penchant for hiding under tables and in cupboards was “sensitivity”; I was painfully
At the Hay Festival with her young fans, May 2016
AS A CHILD, MY RIGID FOLLOWING OF RULES WAS JUST ME BEING ‘A GOOD GIRL’ clumsy because I was “bookish”. My eating habits were restrictive (“fussy”), my morals inflexible (“Milk Monitor”); my candid factual observations were considered “arrogance” (they still are). I had zero sense of humour, but that was to be expected: I was female. And the epic meltdowns were simply “drama”. Had I been a little boy in the Eighties, I suspect I’d have been diagnosed with both autism and dyspraxia within my first week of school. But I was a girl, so I slipped the net. Recognising girls on the spectrum is still statistically less likely, veering from 16-1 to 3-1. Hans Asperger – his syndrome was rightfully removed as a diagnosis from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013 – didn’t even test on us, because we weren’t considered mentally complex enough to warrant study. But we’re here, and we very much exist. Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as “mild” autism or “severe” autism. You can’t be “a little bit on the spectrum”. It’s a colour wheel, and all autistic people fall somewhere on it: we share and differ in characteristics, and we struggle and excel in our own individual areas. But girls don’t get noticed as often, because we don’t fit the male-prescribed, boy-researched, media-outlined mould. I spent my childhood searching for girls like me in literature, film and TV and finding almost nothing. It was like staring into a mirror with a dust sheet hanging over it. With a few exceptions – Lisa Simpson, Anne of Green Gables, Cristina from Grey’s Anatomy, all of whom I now know are canonically undiagnosed autistic females (or “just very clever girls”) – I couldn’t see myself anywhere. So when I wrote Geek Girl – a book about a smart, socially awkward, clumsy, unpopular teenager, Harriet Manners, who hides under tables and relates to the world with animal
facts – I didn’t realise I was writing about my own autism. I just knew I needed to see myself in a book, just so I wouldn’t feel so alone. Autistic girls also present themselves differently, and this is where gender does come into play. While adults were busy assigning me various adjectives, I was sitting in a dimly lit corner observing my peers. One of my first clear memories is of being huddled in a corner of my nursery with a book, watching the other children play outside in the sunshine and thinking: huh? What were they doing? To what end? Humans, I concluded at three years old, were both weird and fascinating. I remember accepting that I wasn’t like them. It was a sensation of being an alien, briefly stepping off my spaceship. Everything was brand new, interesting, completely foreign. It was a land of heightened smells and noises and sights and colours; everything scrabbling simultaneously for my attention. It was also, I realised, a land inhabited. These other little humans were the local residents, and must be studied carefully if I was ultimately to pass as one of them. So I did my homework. When I started school I would watch the faces of the children around me: observing their myriad facial expressions, listening to the way they talked, noting the ways they interacted. My own face naturally lacks expression; I feel things intensely, but my emotions remain locked inside and tricky for me immediately to identify or process. To others this blankstaring is “creepy”, and at five years old I could already sense children instinctively moving away from me. So I began performing: mimicking expressions, smiling if others smiled, laughing when they laughed. My movements were considered strange – tapping my fingers, dancing, shuffling my shoulders – so I forced myself to make them smaller. I’d turn a yelp into a yawn; a repetitive twitch into a nose-scratch. I recognised that connecting involved sharing mutual interests, so I would take one of my many obsessions, which were legion, and monologue at my peers. Did they want to see a piece of igneous rock, which was very old solidified lava? They did not. So I tried to be helpful instead: did they realise they had used the wrong version of “you’re”? They moved further away. The autistic process of trying to hide who you actually are is called “masking”, and culturally it’s a very female thing. Girls want to fit in; we’ll stamp down and crush the things that make us different. It’s also survival: a basic need to remain safe by being the same. I was very bad at masking, and what began with a “gap” between me and others quickly became a chasm. By the time I reached secondary school, the bullying was so bad that I took to crawling under piles of coats on the changing-room floors so that I could process The Times Magazine 23
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my distress in peace and quiet. I was pushed up against walls, stabbed with sharpened pencils. Within a few months I had gone from being hyperverbal to silent: I shut down completely. School itself – the noise, the chaos, the brightness, the smells – was difficult, but now my emotional levels were so high, and my ability to process them so low, that I essentially spent five years in full burnout mode. My parents didn’t know, because I was both unable to communicate and had internalised the experience. It was all my fault: I was weird, I was broken, I was the runt buffalo at the back of the herd and the lions were right to rip me apart. At 16 I finally moved schools – without telling my parents – and decided to start again. I took “masking” to another level, put on a push-up bra, dyed my hair and acted my heart out. It worked. I still felt like an alien all the time, but by pretending to be like others I could make friends, date, attend university. I focused hard on keeping my body still and composed: escaping with relief to low-lit, private areas where I could move freely and process the world on my own terms. It was incredibly hard work and inside I was an exhausted, jittery mess, but I didn’t care as long as I passed for a regular human. I had become what people call “high-functioning” or – a more accurate term – “good at faking it”. But the effort was making me mentally ill. By my twenties I was anxious and depressed pretty much all the time. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar, which I in no way identified with and confused me further. By the time I hit my thirties I was convinced I was “broken”. Not least in the love-life department. Dating, for me, has always been… an adventure. Part of being autistic means that I assume everybody is honest all the time and I don’t see warning signals. Sexual abuse rates are higher among autistic women, and I’m no exception: over the decades I’ve been groped, attacked, coerced, raped. I choose partners who lie, cheat, gaslight and manipulate, and I fail to notice or leave until I’m an emotionally obliterated husk. “I’ve been seeing someone else,” one boyfriend announced in a cavalier fashion. “Where?” I asked, curious. “Around town?” This literal, naive “childlikeness” is often commented on and it’s frustrating. Yes, I frequently misread sarcasm or colloquialisms. Yes, I still get excited about small things. I notice the shape of clouds; I enjoy reading encyclopaedias; I love fluffy things; I know a lot about Marvel and Greek mythology; I collect portraits and sunscreen. But I’m not a child. I’m simply an adult human who has never internalised her environment, so I’m constantly living in a second language: translating everything on a minute-by-minute basis and never really becoming fluent in the
AT NEARLY 40, I’VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE. I’VE BEEN CALLED ‘COLD’ AND ‘ROBOTIC’ world around me. Society makes no sense to me; etiquette is arbitrary; my senses are constantly on red alert; communication is a conscious process, like exchanging currency. And that “gap” can make dating and intimacy incredibly stressful. In attempting to break up with one boyfriend I found myself leaning across the table, plastering a bright smile across my face mid-conversation and politely blurting out, “I’d like to break up with you now, if that’s OK?” In my distress and eagerness to make it “easier” for him, I’d picked the wrong timing, facial expression and tone of voice and made it worse. I don’t lack empathy or compassion – like most autistic people, I feel it in spades – but I certainly lack the ability to demonstrate it effectively. At nearly 40, I’ve never been in love. My relationships disintegrate before they reach that point or I get frightened and run away. Over the years I’ve been called “cold”, “intense”, “robotic”, “distant” and “emotionally stunted”. In truth, it takes a long time for me to relax enough to connect emotionally with anyone. I take things at my own incredibly slow speed, and with modern dating I’m rarely given it. Men want to know why I won’t “just jump in with both feet”. But as soon as I reveal any “weird” characteristics they’re off, so with every new partner I try a little harder to hide them. In essence, I’ve proved an immense disappointment to most of my boyfriends.
“You are nothing like what I expected,” most of them have stated in frustration, because essentially they chose the mask and ended up with a girl who sleeps stiffly on her back with her arms by her side, without a pillow. I finally got my clinical diagnosis at the end of last year. “Congratulations,” the psychologist said with a smile after approximately 12 hours of evaluation. “You’re autistic.” She paused. “Although I could have told you that before we even met. I sent you a questionnaire and you sent me back 25 typed-up pages.” “Congratulations” was the right word. Autism is the answer to the question I have been asking my entire life. It is not something to be “fixed” or “cured”. My brain is simply wired differently – a natural, wonderful divergence of the human mind – and it changes the way I absorb and process the world around me and the people in it, from noise to conversation to colour to emotions. If I don’t “look” autistic – a common response to my diagnosis – it’s because my brain is inside my skull: you can’t “see” autism, in much the same way that my liver, heart and kidneys remain unobserved. And all the years spent believing I am “wrong” are because I have been judged my entire life by people who are not like me. It’s only now, as a late-diagnosed autistic woman, that I’m beginning to appreciate just how beautiful my neuro-divergent mind is. It’s not always easy. I shut down, melt down, burn out. I need a lot of “alone time”. When I’m tired, I can’t even pick up my house keys. I fall over a lot. If I am hyperfocused I have to set alarms to remind me to eat, drink and go to the toilet. Social interactions are difficult. Before I became an author, I couldn’t hold down a normal job because offices and colleagues exhaust me. I internalise emotions until I’m physically sick. I need noisecancelling headphones just to go into Zara. But my brain works quickly, my memory is astonishing, and I can write full books in my head without picking up a pen. I am constantly entertained by the things my brain can do: noises become lights flashing in the dark and I see emotions as colours, shifting like rainbows. I feel deeply, even if others don’t see it. And I have finally found my people: those who love and celebrate my eccentricities, my different perspective and my genuine, unbridled joy in the world. My autism diagnosis means the weight I have carried for 40 years has lifted. Piece by piece I am discovering myself, and I am giddy with it. By opening up about my diagnosis – and that of my protagonist, Harriet – hopefully I’m nudging that dust sheet off the mirror for others too. And, when I eventually begin to date again, for the first time in my life I’m going to see what it’s like: dating as me. n The Times Magazine 25
‘MARCUS DOESN’T EVEN OWN A KETTLE. I HAD TO ORDER HIM ONE FROM JOHN LEWIS’ Tom Kerridge spent the pandemic providing meals for NHS workers and fighting to make sure his restaurants survived lockdown. Now he has a new book out and is teaming up with footballer and school dinners campaigner Marcus Rashford – who says he’s never peeled a carrot – to show that anyone can cook. By Michael Odell
Tom Kerridge, 47, photographed by Jude Edginton at the Hand & Flowers, Marlow. Opposite: Kerridge and Marcus Rashford
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om Kerridge doesn’t look like a guy who’s just walked away from a car crash. The 47-year-old chef is all blue-eyed, dimpled smiles. But make no mistake, in business terms, this year has been a close thing. “I’d say we’ve lost £4-5 million in the pandemic,” he says. “That’s servicing debt and paying rent and wages. Obviously furlough paid 80 per cent of staff earnings up to £27,000, but that’s no good when some of my team are on £70,000 to £100,000 a year. So, I paid them 80 per cent of whatever they earned out of my own pocket. And why not? Risk doesn’t scare me. I’m not that materialistic. But yeah, we could definitely see the cliff edge.” Kerridge runs three pubs in Marlow, Buckinghamshire: the Butcher’s Tap, the Michelin-starred Coach and the double Michelin-starred Hand & Flowers. Then there’s the Bull & Bear in Manchester’s Stock Exchange Hotel and Kerridge’s Bar & Grill at the Corinthia hotel, London, plus a successful food festival, Pub in the Park, and an events company, Lush. But it all started with the Hand & Flowers, the pub he and his wife, the sculptor Beth Cullen Kerridge, built from nothing. “We see ourselves as responsible for more than 200 people’s livelihoods – they are family to me. Beth and I made it through the 2008 crash; we’ll make it through this.” So far they’ve saved every job and also turned a hand to helping others. Last April Kerridge established the charity food-delivery service Meals from Marlow – adapting Lush’s catering capacity to produce 100,000 meals for NHS workers. The local community raised £250,000 to support it and he says it’ll continue to feed vulnerable families for another year. And three weeks ago Kerridge entered the national food debate after Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford made an extraordinary admission: he’d never peeled a carrot in his life. “So brave of him to admit that,” says Kerridge. “Not everyone would share that lack of experience, but he’s a charming, thoughtful young man. He’ll change young lives engaging like that.” Rashford, the son of a single mother, survived on free school meals as a child and last year successfully lobbied the government to extend their availability. Kerridge, brought up by a single mum in Gloucester (his parents split when he was 11 and his father died of multiple sclerosis when he was 18), also ate them. Following Rashford’s veg crisis the pair got together to launch a social media home-cooking campaign called Full Time. They’ve posted “How to cook” videos
Tom Kerridge in 2011
‘We’ve lost £5 million. I paid my staff 80 per cent of their wages out of my pocket. We could see the cliff edge’
On Good Morning Britain after losing 12 stone
With his wife, Beth Cullen Kerridge, in 2018
featuring ultra-simple dishes like “chicken satay” or “tortilla pizza” on Instagram. Kerridge filmed some of the cooking segments at Rashford’s Manchester home. Even he was shocked by the lack of equipment in the £200,000-a-week striker’s kitchen. “It’s a classic Premiership footballer’s house,” he smiles. “There’s a cupboard of trophies under the stairs and a good-sized garden. We planned to film an extremely basic dish – an omelette which you can cook in a kettle, great for people in B&B or temporary accommodation where they only have the very basics.” They soon hit a snag. Marcus Rashford doesn’t own a kettle. “Well, he does now. I’ve ordered him one from John Lewis,” says Kerridge “But the point is, the last year has shown us how the childhood experience of food can shape you. I’ve made meals for Lewis Hamilton and George Clooney, but there are 2.4 million children in this country living with food insecurity – eating a bowl of cereal is often their main meal. And of course Covid has brought home the importance of healthy eating – it’s been brutal for anyone with underlying health issues.” We are at the other end of the food spectrum today. Kerridge and I are sitting in the window alcove of the Coach in Marlow. The Times Magazine 29
Behind us there is a state-of-the-art kitchen. There’s definitely a kettle, and all around staff are polishing and prepping for this week’s big reopening. But Kerridge used to be one of those people with underlying health issues. Battling to save the Hand & Flowers during the 2008 financial crisis he was working 48 hours at a stretch with just the odd nap. He ate big meals while sipping a pint of negroni and then after work he’d sink 15 pints of beer. Approaching his 40th birthday he weighed 30 stone. “It didn’t feel wrong. It felt like, ‘I’m living the life of a pirate and this is my reward,’” he told me the last time we met. He stopped drinking and with swimming, weight-training and healthier eating he lost 12 stone in 2 years. When he went on Good Morning Britain to show off his weight loss and triumphantly held up a pair of his old trousers, he looked like a guy trying to put up a marquee. So, how has he been holding up through the recent stress? I spotted him walking through the centre of Marlow before our interview. The town has a lot of quaint olde worlde frontages. Broad and 6ft 2in tall, Kerridge is about the size of the local newsagents. But he’s big and muscular rather than flabby, like Henry VIII after doing Joe Wicks. “I’ve kept the weight off, I think. First lockdown, the gym and the pool were both shut so I ran 5km a day which I f***ing hated. I’m not a natural runner. Second lockdown, I bought a Wattbike [a high-spec indoor training bike costing north of £2,000]. I cycled watching Sky Sports or listening to Nineties trance music. Now I’ve just started swimming again at a local hotel pool. I do 1km at 7am and then an hour of weights at home in the evening. Thing is, people assume I’m at home cooking myself lobster thermidor in the evening. I’m not. Last night I did a very basic pizza with Acey [his five-year-old son]. Plenty of Michelin-starred chefs are at home eating beans on toast.” So, he’s low maintenance. Even so, I imagine living with a furloughed pirate might be hard work. While Beth has been playing with her new sculpting software (during lockdown she’s been designing on a computer, modelling via a 3-D printer before a final casting in bronze), Kerridge has been helping the local community. But what else? He admits to having an addictive personality. Where did he focus all that energy? “I learnt about family time. I won’t go back to work like before. During the first lockdown I saw Acey learn how to ride a bike. By the second lockdown we were riding on roads. I would have missed that before. In terms of family, it’s been amazing.” There’s been talk of a possible lockdown
baby boom – can we expect him and Beth to be part of it? “No. We were quite old to be parents in the first place and we’ve decided, no more children. We love our space and our family but we’re both very keen to get back to work. There are new and exciting things happening.” Next month Kerridge will open a 25-seat fish ’n’ chip shop in the food hall in Harrods. The Knightsbridge store has recently undergone a £200 million refurbishment and he joins Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton offering casual dining to die for. “Yeah, it’s on the other end of the spectrum from food poverty, but the new food hall is an incredible place. Imagine if Disney did food…” Kerridge is a busy man. A call comes in. He throws himself back in his chair revealing gigantic underarms. There’s a tattoo drawn by Acey on one and a tattooed paw print of his dead dog, Georgie, on the other. The call concerns the Bull & Bear, which
friends) to contribute a video to the Full Time campaign. Why? Not only is Hamilton a sports superstar but, says Kerridge, during lockdown he earned the respect of a young generation with his support for the Black Lives Matter movement. “During lockdown, even as a 47-year-old white male, BLM and the throwing of that statue into the harbour in Bristol was one of the most important things that happened. It’s bad history – a statue celebrating slavery just shouldn’t be there. OK, put it in a museum with an honest explanation of what really happened [during slavery]. This is 2021: Lewis Hamilton and Marcus Rashford are the ones who should have f***ing statues put up of them. We are a hugely culturally rich and eclectic nation and we should celebrate the people who make that happen.” Outside, it’s starting to rain. That reminds me, we are supposed to be talking about Kerridge’s new barbecue book, Outdoor
‘I won’t go back to work like before. During lockdown I saw my son learn how to ride a bike. I would have missed that’ he owns with former Manchester United players Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs. “You’ve got to be on it all the time,” he says during a pause. “You might be discussing burger relishes in Manchester or the bespoke deep-fat fryer we’ve got going into Harrods. But I love it.” It’s a far cry from his latch-key existence in a council flat in Gloucester. He lives in Marlow, and even among locals like Robbie Williams, Chris Evans and Ricky Gervais (I once saw Shakin’ Stevens outside the chemist too), he is something of a figurehead – I count four people waving at him through the pub window just while we’re talking. Does he feel like he’s made it? “Nah, I’m not a celebrity. And also, why be starstruck? They’re all just people.” He thinks again. There was one encounter where he became a bit tingly. His events company, Lush, serves food on luxury yachts at grands prix. Kerridge loves motor racing. Two years ago he was in Monaco and seventimes Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton ambled over. “For me, a working-class black guy from a broken family [Hamilton’s parents split when he was two years old; he then lived variously with both his mother and father] who enters a sport dominated by rich white kids and proves himself possibly the greatest ever? That’s a hero.” Kerridge is trying to persuade Marcus Rashford to persuade Hamilton (the pair are
Cooking. It’s about as far from making an omelette in a kettle as you can get. How do you fancy pork belly stuffed with ’nduja sausage followed by brioche eggy bread with booze-infused apricots. It’s very Kerridge: big, brash and easy-going, even more so than fussy Michelin-starred cooking. “I’m not just saying this but during lockdown, our outdoor cooking was a lifesaver,” he says. In April 2020, Beth turned 50 and Kerridge planned something special. For her 40th birthday, he’d given her a trip to Carrara, Italy, where Michelangelo sourced the marble for his sculptures so it had to be better than that. “But it was the proper lockdown. We were stuck indoors. I thought, ‘I can’t just make her cheese on toast.’” They waited until July, when restrictions were relaxed, for a proper celebration. Kerridge then drove her down to their holiday home on the north Kent coast where he’d set up a surprise barbecue with friends and family. “After being separated from people, it was the best day ever. Just being outside and feeling that human touch from loved ones… I’ve missed it so much. We all have. That’s all hospitality is: people at their best. And you know what, I’ll do everything I can to get it back.” n Turn overleaf for recipes from Tom Kerridge’s new cookbook, Outdoor Cooking: the Ultimate Modern Barbecue Bible The Times Magazine 31
T OU P LL EE PU D K AN
Eat! E G ID R R E K M O T H IT W FIRE UP THE BARBIE
Easy recipes for outdoor cooking from the chef’s latest cookbook
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PHOTOGRAPHS Cristian Barnett
1. SMOKY PRAWNS COOKED IN FOIL Serves 6
2. THREE-CHEESE QUESADILLAS Serves 4
5 Once the cheese has melted and the tortillas are golden brown, lift them off the barbecue and serve with a mixed salad alongside.
• 600g extra-large tiger prawns, peeled and deveined (tail shells left on) • 100g butter • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil • 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced • 1 long red chilli, sliced • 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika • 80ml dry sherry • Salt and freshly ground pepper • 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped • Crusty bread, to serve
• 1 tbsp olive oil • 30g butter • 4 garlic cloves, sliced • 300g chestnut mushrooms, thickly sliced • Salt and freshly ground black pepper • 4 large flour tortillas • 80g blue cheese, finely crumbled • 120g mozzarella, grated • 120g cheddar, grated • 3 fresh jalapeño chillies, thickly sliced • Olive oil, to brush • Mixed salad leaves, to serve
3. TOFU AND VEG SKEWERS
1 Tear off a 45cm length of foil and place shiny-side down on your work surface. Lay a piece of baking parchment, the same size, on top. Fold them together in half and seal the edges on opposite sides by folding the foil edges over and over a few times, pressing them firmly. Put the prawns into the foil envelope through the open side. 2 Put the butter, olive oil, garlic, chilli, smoked paprika and sherry into a small pan. Place over a high heat and let it bubble away for 2 minutes. Take off the heat and season well with salt and pepper. 3 Pour the butter into the foil envelope over the prawns. Fold the foil edges together along the open side to seal the envelope completely. Place the foil parcel directly on your hot barbecue and cook for 12-15 minutes, depending on the heat of your barbecue. You’ll be able to tell that it’s nearly ready when the envelope begins to puff up with steam. 4 Remove the foil parcel from the barbecue, open it carefully and tip the prawns and juices into a serving bowl. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with crusty bread. 34 The Times Magazine
1 Heat the olive oil and butter in a cast-iron pan on your hot barbecue. When hot, add the garlic and stir for a minute or so, until sizzling gently. Now add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until they are softened and browned. Take the pan off the heat and leave to cool a little. 2 Lay each tortilla flat and make a cut from the centre to the bottom outer edge. Visually divide the tortilla into quarters. Distribute the blue cheese over the lower left-hand quarter. Spoon the mushrooms over the top left quarter, then scatter the mozzarella over the top right quarter. Lastly, sprinkle the cheddar and sliced jalapeños over the lower right quarter (next to the blue cheese). 3 Fold the blue cheese quarter up over the mushroom layer and fold that over again and one more time to enclose all the filling. 4 Brush the folded tortillas lightly with olive oil and place on the barbecue where you can achieve a medium heat. You don’t want them to brown too quickly before the cheese has melted, so keep a close eye on them.
Makes 8 • 400g firm tofu • A good pinch of salt • 150g baby corn • 150g baby courgettes • 150g baby mushrooms • 150g Romano peppers, halved, cored and deseeded • 2 spring onions, finely sliced, to serve • Sweet chilli dipping sauce, to serve For the marinade • 4 tbsp soy sauce • 2 tbsp honey • 5cm piece of fresh ginger • 2 tbsp sesame oil • 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar • 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds 1 Cut the tofu into 2cm cubes and place in a shallow dish. Mix together the marinade ingredients, except the sesame seeds, in a bowl. Pour half the marinade over the tofu, mix well and leave to marinate for 20 minutes, turning the cubes over at least once. 2 Add the toasted sesame seeds to the rest of the marinade and set aside for brushing on the skewers during cooking. 3 Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil over a high heat and season with a good pinch of salt. Add the corn and cook for 2-3 minutes. Drain and cool slightly. 4 Cut the baby corn, courgettes, mushrooms and peppers into 2cm pieces. Thread the
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marinated tofu and veg pieces onto 8 skewers, alternating them. 5 Place the skewers on a medium-hot barbecue and cook for 10-12 minutes, brushing them regularly with the remaining marinade and turning them often. When the veg are lightly charred in places and cooked through, lift the skewers off the barbecue. 6 Place the skewers on a serving platter. Scatter over the sliced spring onions and serve at once with the sweet chilli dipping sauce.
4. CHARRED PEACH, PARMA HAM, BOCCONCINI Serves 4 • 4 ripe/firm peaches, halved and destoned • 2 tbsp rapeseed oil • 10 slices of Parma ham • A large handful of rocket leaves • A large handful of watercress leaves • 350g bocconcini (baby buffalo mozzarella) • 4 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted, to serve • 4 basil leaves, roughly chopped, to serve For the dressing • Half a red chilli, finely diced • 1 red onion, finely diced • 100ml extra virgin olive oil • 40ml sherry vinegar • Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 Lay the peach halves, cut-side up, on a tray and drizzle with the rapeseed oil. When ready to cook, place each peach half, cut-side down, on the hot barbecue for 3 minutes until they have lovely charred marks on the underside. You just want to cook them briefly, to ensure they retain that kick of freshness. Carefully lift the peaches off the barbecue and set aside.
2 To make the dressing, mix together the chilli, red onion, extra virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar in a bowl. Season with a pinch each of salt and pepper. 3 Briefly lay the slices of Parma ham on the barbecue and heat for no more than 20 seconds on each side, until they crisp up a little. Transfer to a tray and set aside. 4 Place 2 peach halves on each serving plate and surround with the rocket and watercress. Add the Parma ham and bocconcini. Spoon on the dressing and sprinkle over the toasted almonds and basil to serve.
5. SPICY FISH SKEWERS Makes 8 • 8 skinless salmon fillets (about 125g each) • 2 large garlic cloves, grated • 2.5cm piece of fresh ginger, grated • Juice of 1 lime • 200g Greek yoghurt • 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder • 1 tsp ground turmeric • 1 tsp ground cumin • 2 tsp ground coriander • 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika • Salt and freshly ground black pepper • Naan bread or roti, to serve • A handful of coriander leaves, to serve • 1 long green chilli, finely sliced, to serve • Lime halves, to serve • Sweet chilli sauce, to serve 1 To prepare the salmon, cut each fillet into 4 equal-sized chunks. Place in a bowl with the garlic, ginger and lime juice and mix well. 2 In another bowl, mix the yoghurt with the spices and some salt and pepper. Add this spiced yoghurt to the salmon and mix well
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Eat! TOM KERRIDGE
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again. Leave to marinate in a cool place for at least 20 minutes, or up to an hour. 3 Meanwhile, if using wooden skewers, soak 8 of them, 16cm long, in water for 30 minutes. 4 Once marinated, thread the salmon onto your skewers, putting 4 chunks onto each one. Place the skewers on the hot barbecue and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown and lightly charred. 5 Meanwhile, warm the roti or naan on the edge of the barbecue. Once cooked, transfer the skewers to a warm plate. 6 Serve the skewers on the warm bread. Scatter over some coriander and sliced green chilli. Serve with lime halves for squeezing over and sweet chilli sauce on the side.
6. SQUID, CHORIZO, CHICKPEA SALAD Serves 6 • 1kg cleaned squid, including the tentacles (beak removed) • 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika • 2 large garlic cloves, finely grated • Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon • 7 tbsp extra virgin olive oil • Salt and freshly ground black pepper • 2 x 400g tins chickpeas, drained and rinsed • 300g courgettes, diced • 350g baby plum tomatoes • 2 tbsp sherry vinegar • 4 cooking chorizo sausages, halved lengthways • A handful of flat parsley leaves, chopped For the garlic toasts • 50g butter, softened • 1 large garlic clove, finely grated • 1 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped • 4 slices of sourdough The Times Magazine 35
Eat! TOM KERRIDGE
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1 Place the squid on a board, cut along one side and open out flat. Using a sharp knife, lightly score the inside of the flesh in a crisscross pattern. Trim any long tentacles. 2 Put all the squid into a bowl and add the paprika, garlic, lemon zest and 3 tbsp olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper. Mix and leave to marinate for 20 minutes. 3 Meanwhile, tip the chickpeas into a large shallow bowl and add the diced courgettes and baby tomatoes. Add the lemon juice, sherry vinegar and remaining 4 tbsp olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and toss to mix. 4 For the garlic toasts, in a small bowl, mix the butter with the garlic and parsley until evenly combined. Spread both sides of the sourdough with the garlic butter. 5 When you’re ready, lay the chorizo sausages on the hot barbecue. Add the sourdough slices too, slightly away from the coals as the butter may drip. Cook the chorizo and bread for 3-4 minutes on each side. The toast is ready when it is golden brown on both sides. Remove and set aside on a warmed platter. 6 Place the squid, scored-side down, and the tentacles on the hot barbecue and cook for 2-3 minutes. Repeat on the other side. 7 As soon as it is cooked, remove the squid from the barbecue and cut into bite-sized pieces. Do the same with the chorizo and garlic toast. Add the squid, chorizo and garlic toast to the chickpea salad, along with the chopped parsley. Toss gently and serve.
7. CLASSIC COLESLAW Serves 4 • 2 red onions • 1 Spanish onion • 10 radishes, thinly sliced 36 The Times Magazine
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• A quarter of a white cabbage, tough core removed • A bunch of spring onions, finely sliced
9. WARM NEW POTATO SALAD Serves 4
For the dressing • 80g mayonnaise • 1 tbsp English mustard • 1 tsp cracked black pepper • A good pinch of salt
• 800g new potatoes, boiled until just tender and drained • 4 garlic cloves (skin on), bashed • 3 rosemary sprigs, leaves picked and roughly torn • Salt and freshly ground black pepper • 2 tbsp olive oil
1 Slice the red and Spanish onions very finely and place in a large bowl with the sliced radishes. Shred the white cabbage finely and add to the bowl. 2 To make the dressing, mix together the mayonnaise, mustard, cracked black pepper and salt in a small bowl until everything is well combined. 3 Add the dressing to the cabbage mix and toss well to coat everything evenly. Scatter over the sliced spring onions, toss again and serve.
8. MEZCAL COOLER Serves 4 • 150ml mezcal • Juice of 2 large pink grapefruit (350ml) • 150ml pear juice • 2 tbsp agave • 20ml yuzu juice (from Waitrose or Ocado) • Ice cubes, to serve • 4 slices of pink grapefruit, to garnish 1 Pour the mezcal, grapefruit juice, pear juice, agave and yuzu juice into a large jug and mix well with a spoon. Fill the jug with ice cubes and mix again. 2 Pour the cocktail into glasses and add a slice of pink grapefruit to each one.
For the dressing • 1 tbsp runny honey • 1 tbsp English mustard • 2 tbsp chives, finely chopped • 2 tbsp good-quality olive oil 1 Put the boiled new potatoes, bashed garlic and rosemary on a large sturdy baking tray. Season well with salt and pepper, trickle over the olive oil and toss together. 2 Lay the tray on the hot barbecue. Cook for 3 minutes and then give the potatoes a good shake. Cook them for a further 3 minutes until hot, then remove from the barbecue. 3 Pick out the hot potatoes and put them into a large bowl. Add the honey, mustard, chives and olive oil, toss them well to coat in the dressing and leave to stand and soak up the flavour for 5 minutes or so. Serve warm. n
Extracted from Outdoor Cooking: The Ultimate Modern Barbecue Bible by Tom Kerridge, published by Bloomsbury on May 27 (£22)
‘A renegade, self-important maniac’ ‘He is both dangerous and a genius’ ‘Once he’s in a fight, he won’t back down’
TAKE COVER! HERE COMES DOM
Dominic Cummings photographed by Hollie Adams after leaving 10 Downing Street for the final time on November 13, 2020
When Dominic Cummings appears before the Commons Covid inquiry next week, he will answer questions ‘for as long as the MPs want’. What will he reveal – and how damaging will the fallout be for Boris Johnson? Rachel Sylvester talks to the Westminster insiders who know him best
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: HOLLIE ADAMS/GETTY IMAGES. THIS SPREAD: DAVID LEVENSON/GETTY IMAGES, ANDREW PARSONS/PARSONS MEDIA/EYEVINE, GETTY IMAGES, GEORGE CRACKNELL WRIGHT/LNP
first met Dominic Cummings in 2003, when he was working for Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader at the time. I was a reporter; he was the party’s director of strategy and he was astonishingly rude about his boss.
Over drinks at the Cinnamon Club in Westminster, Cummings denounced the man he was working for as “a muppet”. Duncan Smith was, he went on, completely out of his depth and surrounded by idiots. Even by the backbiting standards of Westminster, it was an extraordinary act of disloyalty. Within weeks, Cummings had resigned and written an article describing Duncan Smith as “incompetent” and insisting that he must be replaced. The Conservative leader, he added contemptuously, was “the symptom rather than cause of a party desperately short of the political essentials: understanding, talent, will and adaptation”. Cummings was equally excoriating about David Cameron when Alice Thomson and I interviewed him for The Times in 2014. He had just quit as an adviser to Michael Gove at the Department for Education, and he did not hold back in his criticisms of the prime minister. Cameron was “a sphinx without a riddle” who “bumbles from one shambles to another without the slightest sense of purpose”, he said. “To get anything done you have to have priorities and there are no priorities.” He almost felt sorry for the civil servants. “The poor buggers are caught between structural dysfunction and politicians running around who don’t really know what they’re doing all day or what the purpose of their being in power is.” Downing Street was a “shambolic court” staffed by “third-rate, suck-up-kick-down, sycophant” aides. “Everyone is discouraged from telling the truth to important people... There’s no grip, no focus.” The tirade against his former colleagues was not a slip of the tongue or a temporary lapse of judgment that he then regretted. Cummings emailed afterwards to make sure that we had understood the significance of what he was saying and to strengthen the quotes. Boris Johnson should have realised that if he fell out with his senior adviser, Cummings would seek his revenge. The disrupter-in-chief, who was ousted from No 10 in November, is setting out to destroy a third Tory leader. On Wednesday, Cummings will give evidence to MPs on the Commons health and science select committees who are conducting a joint inquiry into the government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. Downing Street is 40 The Times Magazine
terrified about what he could say and what evidence he might provide. In an explosive blog post last month, Cummings damned Johnson as “unethical” and said he has fallen “below the standards of competence and integrity this country deserves”. Enraged by a No 10 briefing that suggested he had been involved in “systematic leaking” and was “bitter about what’s happened since he left”, he accused the prime minister of trying to stop a leak inquiry relating to the second lockdown because it implicated a friend of Carrie Symonds, his fiancée. He also suggested that the prime minister had tried to get Tory donors secretly to fund £58,000 worth of renovations to his Downing Street flat. Offering to hand over data from his phone, he promised to “answer questions about any of these issues to Parliament on 26 May for as long as the MPs want”. The extent of the damage he inflicts will depend on the evidence he is able to produce. But a political street fighter who often prefers email or WhatsApp messages to verbal conversations is likely to have a paper trail. Cummings admires the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, who advises in The Art of War that “winning without fighting is the highest form of warfare”. But he also believes that sometimes it is necessary to go on the offensive. It was their collective killer instinct that made Cummings and Johnson a formidable double act. “Boris and Dominic are both willing to throw the dice and take brave decisions,” says one friend of both men. “They are gamblers and without them we would be living in a very different world now. They have totally transformed the political landscape.” Now, though, the balance of power between them has shifted. Cummings, out of government, has nothing to lose and everything to gain from taking down his former boss. Johnson, still in No 10, has everything to lose and nothing to gain from going to war with his former consigliere. “Dominic’s an agent provocateur,” says Duncan Smith. “He always ends up in a stand-off with his enemies. If a leader no longer accepts everything he says, he finds that difficult to cope with and at some point he turns on the person he is serving – he did that with me, Cameron and now he is doing it with Boris.” Cummings has been described both as a visionary and a fool, a “career psychopath” and a campaign genius, an “unelected foulmouthed oaf” and masterful Machiavelli. Perhaps he is all these things. He is mercurial, clever, funny, original, infuriating and always unpredictable. He has contempt for politicians, but he is drawn to power. He was responsible for the Conservatives’ best general election result for decades yet he has never been a member of the Tory party.
From top: as campaign director at Business for Sterling in 2001; talking to the press outside his London home on May 4 this year
‘He’s a brilliant and creative mind... But also an obsessive who is incapable of change’ He has an instinctive understanding of the public loathing for politicians, but he is the only political aide whose face has been turned into a cut-out-and-keep “Do what the hell you want” mask on the front page of the Daily Star after his infamous drive to Barnard Castle during the first lockdown. He is a populist who is not afraid to sound pretentious. “We need leaders with an understanding of Thucydides and statistical modelling, who have read The Brothers Karamazov and The Quark and the Jaguar, who can feel Kipling’s Kim and succeed in Tetlock’s Good Judgment Project,” he wrote in one of his blogs. Cummings cultivated an air of eccentricity in Downing Street, calling for “weirdos and misfits” to join the government and comparing the cabinet unfavourably to the children’s TV superheroes PJ Masks. But he was ruthlessly efficient when he wanted to be. He can be an appalling bully – he had one special adviser, Sonia Khan, marched out of No 10 by armed police. But he can also be very kind. Ahead of one interview
From top: with Johnson and Michael Gove at the Vote Leave HQ, June 2016; in the Downing Street Rose Garden, May 2020
I had forgotten to charge my phone and he turned up with a variety of what he called “Apple doofers”. The playwright James Graham, who met him when he was researching his 2019 television drama Brexit: The Uncivil War, believes there are “two visions” of Cummings – the disruptive genius and the ineffective maverick. “The truth is probably between the two, but in a polarised, divisive political climate such a figure is always going to ignite controversy and fascination in equal measure.” He admits he felt a little nervous before going to visit him. “I kept thinking, what’s he going to think of this Remain-voting playwright? He’s not going to tolerate me,” he says. “But I found that he listened and was curious. I was open with him that I thought this unnecessary civil war was not a positive force in our politics. What surprised me was that he agreed with that. The biggest surprise takeaway was the huge scepticism that he had about referendums as a political instrument. He thought they were blunt and divisive, reductive and stupid. I think he is much cleverer than his opponents like to admit.” The actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Cummings in the Channel 4 drama, was also charmed. He went round for dinner with the Vote Leave guru intending to stick to water but stayed late into the night drinking red wine and copying his subject’s mannerisms.
A friend of Cummings says, “He’s in politics for the right reasons – he’s not interested in peerages or board appointments. He wants to change society for the better.” Yet when he was in Downing Street, and had the chance to achieve his ambitions, he adopted an aggressive and divisive style that ultimately scuppered these aims. Sir Anthony Seldon, the contemporary historian who has studied successive prime ministers, believes that the former adviser “is one of the most brilliant and creative minds to have impacted British government in the last 40 years”, but his self-destructive streak stops him having the full impact he should. “He doesn’t know how to bring about change in government or when to stop pushing and alienating people. He’s an obsessive who is seemingly incapable of change. He’s the Peter Pan of British politics, an utterly brilliant mind that never quite grew up – the imperious behaviour, the attention-seeking, the shrill contempt for others, the inability to learn or adapt to criticism, the rage, are all indications of an immature personality.” Sir Craig Oliver, Cameron’s director of communications, says the skills that made Cummings such a brilliant campaigner do not translate well into government. “He has proven he can win campaigns. But can he deal with anything longer term, which requires an ability to build, not destroy and cause chaos?” Oliver says. “He can be destructive but can he deal with the complexities and compromises of making things long-term? There’s a pattern suggesting he can’t. He and Michael Gove had pictures of Lenin, Thatcher and Malcolm X on their office wall. He said it was because all of them believed the ends justified the means. I don’t think that’s true – and there’s something of the precocious schoolboy and pseudo-intellectual about it, as well as his constant banging on about Maoist creative destruction being a good thing.” Cummings’ character was formed years before he arrived at Westminster. Born in 1971 in Durham, he still has a slight northern lilt and likes to think of himself as an outsider in the political world, but his background is not disadvantaged. His father was a project manager for the construction of oil rigs, his mother was a special needs teacher and he went to the private Durham School. His wife, Mary Wakefield, a journalist on The Spectator, is the daughter of Sir Humphry Wakefield, who owns Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. At their wedding, Michael Gove made a speech contrasting the poor deprived child who grew up with no central heating and hand-medowns, and the luckier half of the couple, who had fitted carpets and nice warm rooms. It was, of course, Mary who was freezing in the draughty inherited family pile and Dominic who was raised in middle-class comfort.
At Oxford, where his tutors included Robin Lane Fox for Thucydides and Norman Stone for Bismarck, Cummings got a first in ancient and modern history. After graduating, he went to live in Russia for three years. There he helped set up a new airline flying from Samara, on the Volga, to Vienna. It was not a success. The KGB issued threats, the airline only got one passenger and the pilot took off without them. But the Berlin Wall had just come down and it was an amazing time to be living in Moscow. Cummings shared a flat with the broadcaster and journalist Liam Halligan, sleeping on a sofa in the hall. “It was a huge moment in history,” Halligan says. “It changed him in that it gave him the sense that history and politics were there to be shaped, and they are shaped by people doing stuff and winning arguments.” Cummings took that feeling back to London and between 1999 and 2002 led the Business for Sterling campaign to stop Britain joining the euro. Then, after his disastrous stint with Duncan Smith, he joined the campaign to persuade the northeast to vote against Labour’s plan for a regional assembly. In both campaigns, he road-tested the “people versus politicians” strategy that would later be so successful in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum and at the 2019 general election. It was at a Business for Sterling breakfast, held at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, that he met Gove, then a leader writer on The Times. They kept in touch and after Gove was elected to parliament, then made shadow education secretary, he asked Cummings to be his adviser. In 2010, Gove moved into government as education secretary and Cummings joined him at the Department for Education. Sam Freedman, who worked alongside Cummings for four years at the DfE as a policy adviser, vividly remembers their first encounter. “He looked like he’d been pulled through a hedge backwards and he said to me, ‘I know absolutely nothing about education. Tell me everything I need to know.’ That’s not the sort of thing someone says when they’re being arrogant.” Freedman says it took him ages to get the measure of Cummings because he is such a “complex” character. “He’s the most fascinating person I have ever worked with. He is compelling and charismatic. People see the bad side but they don’t see why he inspires such loyalty in people,” he says. “When he intellectually respects somebody, which doesn’t happen that often, he can be very kind and loyal to them. When he doesn’t, he will be very dismissive. He can be ridiculous in picking petty fights, being vindictive and aggressive and shouting at people in an unconstructive way. I’ve never known anyone who cares less about being liked by people he isn’t interested in.” The Times Magazine 41
Freedman is not surprised that Cummings’ relationship with Johnson has broken down. “I can only imagine Dom would find him enormously annoying and have very little respect for him,” he says. “I always felt that the relationship was going to go wrong. He’s not the type of person Dom would respect. He’s got no intellectual rigour. Boris is louche and I can’t see Dom liking any of that.” The complicated funding arrangement for the “gold wallpaper” refurbishment of the Downing Street flat is a case in point. “Dom’s got quite a good sense of what the public will find unacceptable,” Freedman says. “He hates politics. He’s never been a member of a party, he can’t stand any of them and he’s got that instinctive suspicion of politicians that’s pretty standard in most people’s minds. Boris is only interested in power and politics and status, whereas Dom is only interested in achieving goals – like leaving the EU. He’s a genuine revolutionary.” That is all very well in opposition, but it is much harder to be a genuine revolutionary in government. At the DfE, Cummings’ attacks on the “blob” – the educational establishment – alienated teachers and made it harder to deliver reform. He claimed on his blog that one official told him, “You’re a mutant virus; I’m the immune system.” When he reached Downing Street, the self-styled radical was at the heart of the establishment he so despised. Weekly Friday evening special adviser meetings became known as the “Dom Show”. Dave Penman, general secretary of the First Division Association, the trade union for senior civil servants, says there was often a ritual humiliation of the ministerial aides. “He treated them like schoolkids, picking on people to embarrass them and frighten the rest. It was very macho. He was trying to enforce discipline in a way that says, ‘I’m going to run government rather than you.’ ” The civil service was warned that a “hard rain” was going to fall on Whitehall. “We had senior civil servants contacting us terrified that they were going to be sacked,” Penman says. “They knew they couldn’t win the briefing war. Anyone who was an incumbent was not wanted or valued. They were seen as part of a Remainer elite. It was a climate of fear and that doesn’t make for good government, because civil servants are supposed to speak truth to power and sometimes challenge or give uncomfortable advice.” Power went to Cummings’ head. It is one thing for a plucky underdog to catapult stones at the powerful, but in Downing Street, Cummings was Goliath rather than David. “The problem,” says Alan Duncan, the former foreign office minister, “was that he wouldn’t keep merely advising – he insisted on directing. He personifies the
‘He doesn’t care if he burns the house down. His only loyalty is to himself’ constitutional aberration that special advisers have become. Cummings is disrespectful of authority, he thinks that the only way you can change things is to blow things up. He had no deference for the prime minister or any other politician. He had a destructive arrogance. You cannot run government with such a renegade, self-important maniac.” There was a stark contrast between Cummings’ rhetoric and the reality he created in government. In one blog he suggested that the country should be run like an ant colony, which is good at “self-organisation” and able to adapt to changing scenarios. But when he got the chance to put his ideas into practice, he sought to centralise power in No 10. “He was determined to get power by disempowering others,” is how a senior figure who worked closely with him puts it. In theory he loved the idea of self-correcting feedback loops, but in government they all had to come back to him. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, Cummings attended meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. “With the pandemic he broke all sorts of crockery,” says one former mandarin. “He inserted himself into the Sage process. It is supposed to be an academic group reporting independently, and suddenly this political headbanger turned up. However he behaved, he was the most powerful adviser in government and he was right at the heart of what was supposed to be an independent process. He was pushing a particular view, which was lockdown. It would have been quite a brave scientist in that forum with him there who would have started saying, ‘What about a more differentiated approach?’ ” Senior Tories say Johnson started to have doubts about his adviser after the departure of Sajid Javid in February 2020. Javid resigned as chancellor rather than accept Cummings’ demands to put the Treasury advisers under Downing Street control. “That was the beginning of the end,” one says. “The prime minister thought, ‘What the hell has happened here?’ ” Symonds also took against Cummings, who did not attempt to disguise his contempt for her. Privately, ministers began to warn Johnson not to trust Cummings. “He was someone who had his own agenda,” one former secretary of state says. “I could tell right from the start that what he cared about was what he wanted, not what the PM wanted or the government wanted. To the extent that overlapped with what the PM wanted, that was a happy coincidence. He cares only about himself. He doesn’t care if he burns the house
down. His only loyalty is to himself. I’m not surprised what he’s doing now.” For someone who is so intellectually curious, Cummings exhibits a strange lack of self-knowledge. The attempt to justify his trip to Barnard Castle on the grounds that he was testing his eyesight was only the most egregious example. As one senior Tory says, “He is a master strategist about everyone but himself.” He rails against Britain’s tendency to select leaders from “a subset of Oxbridge egomaniacs with humanities degrees”, even though he has an Oxford history degree. Cummings hates being told when he is wrong. A good example is free school meals. Cummings had opposed universal free school meals as a “gimmick” when they were first proposed by the Liberal Democrats, and so he failed to understand the damage that would be caused by rejecting Marcus Rashford’s call for them to be extended to the school holidays. There is no room for compromise. Like Malcolm X, Cummings believes in achieving his goals “by any means necessary”. One Whitehall grandee says, “The interesting thing about him is he is really committed to doing what he believes is the right thing, but he does believe that the ends justify the means, therefore he will engage in some pretty low tactics. He’s highly principled in the sense that he doesn’t just do things to keep power, be in office or get the perks – it’s about trying to achieve an agenda. With all his techniques, if he is right you can just about justify them; if he’s wrong, it’s really dangerous because the checks and balances are not there.” Cummings’ impact is undeniable. David Gauke, the former cabinet minister who was one of 21 Conservative MPs thrown out of the party during the Brexit showdown, describes him as “both dangerous and a genius”. He remembers going to see Johnson with colleagues ahead of the crucial Brexit vote. Cummings bumped into the MPs in the corridor and told them that he had no idea who many of them were. “He could see that British politics was realigning and exploited that. We had to be purged,” Gauke says. “He has fundamentally changed the Tory party, in my view not for the better. He could see what you could get away with. It’s win at all costs.” That is the danger for Johnson as Cummings prepares to go into battle once again. “He won’t have any compunction about using whatever he’s got,” Sam Freedman says. “Once he’s in a fight, he will keep fighting. He won’t back down.” Cummings likes to quote Vladimir Lenin’s motto “The worse, the better” to make the argument that change comes through disruption. For years, the Vote Leave brothers in arms were on the same side in the revolution. Now, they are pitched against each other and so the worse things are for the PM, the better they are for his former aide. n The Times Magazine 43
IS STACEY ABRAMS THE MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN IN AMERICAN POLITICS? Her fight against voter suppression won Georgia for the Democrats and helped get Joe Biden into the White House. Now Stacey Abrams, the 47-year-old lawyer from rural Mississippi, is being tipped as a future president of the United States – and writing political thrillers in her spare time. Interview by Jane Mulkerrins PHOTOGRAPH Landon Nordeman
Barack Obama and Stacey Abrams, now 47, at a campaign rally in Atlanta in 2018
With Joe Biden in Selma, Alabama, in March 2020
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t a drive-in rally in Atlanta, Georgia, last month, to commemorate his first 100 days in office, Joe Biden was already looking further ahead – all the way to his replacement, in fact, tipping Stacey Abrams as a potential successor. “Stacey Abrams can be anything she wants to be, from whatever she chooses to president,” pronounced Biden, in his idiosyncratic syntax. It’s far from the first time he has bigged up Abrams who, at 47 years old and with no national political experience, might not be an obvious frontrunner for future president. She was shortlisted by Biden to become his vice-president, despite never having held national office. And in January, on the eve of a crucial Senate race in Georgia, the president-elect publicly praised her in the most effusive terms. “Let’s hear it for Stacey Abrams,” he said. “Nobody, nobody, in America has done more for the right to vote than Stacey. Stacey, you are changing Georgia. You have changed America.” After four years of Donald Trump’s wild exaggerations, we’ve become used to the leader of the free world hamming it up. But Biden isn’t Trump and his plaudits for Abrams aren’t hyperbole. They are, however, the words of a very grateful man. Abrams is the founder of Fair Fight, an organisation set up to tackle voter suppression, which signed up 800,000 new voters – predominantly young people and people of colour – in her native Georgia in the run-up to the election in November 2020. The state had not voted for a Democrat since Bill Clinton, a southerner, was elected in 1992 and many believed there was no chance of it doing so almost three decades later. On November 19, after two Republican-ordered recounts, Biden eventually won Georgia by 12,284 votes, in what was probably the biggest surprise of his election victory. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Fair Fight, Biden would almost certainly not have won Georgia.
Abrams, top left, with her family in the Eighties
Biden says, ‘Nobody has done more for the right to vote than Stacey. She has changed the country’ The day after the election, Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, tweeted: “We owe Stacey Abrams our greatest gratitude and respect. Rarely does one person deserve such disproportionate credit for major progress and change.” A month after the election, she made the Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, alongside Angela Merkel, Kamala Harris, Jacinda Ardern and Oprah Winfrey. It is no exaggeration either to say that Abrams is now widely considered the most prominent political power broker in the United States. “I don’t like losing,” says Abrams when I speak to her in her office in Atlanta. “But because I’ve never enjoyed an easy path to opportunity, I always have a back-up plan and a back-up plan to the back-up plan.” In 2018, she stood for governor of Georgia. Had she won, she would have been the first black woman to run a US state. She was backed by Obama and Winfrey, plus the singer John Legend and actor Will Ferrell, all of whom campaigned on her behalf, while fellow Georgian and singer Janelle Monáe composed a “fight song” for her. After losing out to Republican Brian Kemp by less than 55,000 votes, she “sat shiva” for ten days. “I went through all the stages of grief.” And then, she says, “I started plotting.” She founded Fair Fight, the impact of which has, ironically, propelled her to national and international prominence, far beyond what she would have gained as governor. Among American liberals, Abrams is now regarded as something of a deity, a veritable progressive pin-up. The response from American friends when I tell them I’m
interviewing her is one of starstruck awe on a level usually reserved for A-list celebrities. In person, none of the usual A-list traits – expansive ego, inability to answer the questions and/or reversion to a set of key messaging points – is apparent. Abrams does have a tendency towards wordiness, but it’s wrapped in a mellifluous Mississippi lilt. Also unusually, particularly for one frequently praised as a fiery orator, Abrams confesses that aspects of public life are a serious challenge. She is, she says, a certified introvert. “When I told my best friend I was running for office the first time, she laughed for five minutes solid,” she says. Her perfect weekend is spent alone with just the Star Trek marathon for company. “People tend to conflate introversion and shyness,” she says. “Introversion is how I navigate the world, but it is not in conflict with ambition. I am goal-oriented and it turns out you can’t secretly run for office.” Perhaps just as surprising is that, as well as fighting for voting rights, Abrams has a side hustle in books. She’s published two political titles: Lead from the Outside and Our Time Is Now. Less predictably, she has authored eight steamy romance novels – including Reckless, Deception and Hidden Sins – under her nom de plume, Selena Montgomery. An ardent James Bond fan, she’d always aspired to write a spy story featuring a black female protagonist, but, in her final year at Yale Law School, when she sat down to write her first novel, publishers were not interested in stories with black heroines, particularly in the espionage genre. So she tweaked the story slightly and gave her black heroine romance alongside intrigue. “I would call it serendipity that, because I couldn’t publish it as a spy novel, I discovered I could write really exciting romance novels.” Her first book, Rules of Engagement, was about a black woman who was a chemical physicist and a spy. Writing romance was also partly “selftutelage”. She admits she is “very bad at reading romantic cues”. Writing, she says, has “not The Times Magazine 47
solved the ultimate problem, but there’s a lot of self-discovery”. She is single. “I briefly dated someone in 2020, but it did not work out. There was no great trial, just that we lived in different cities and I have a complicated calendar. So I’m open to other offers.” Now, under her own name, she has written a legal thriller, While Justice Sleeps. My first question is: how? “I can usually get about 3,000 words done in a day. I’m very structured. I have my synopses and my storyboards. I don’t get opportunities for writer’s block.” Her latest novel is a twisty, pacey pageturner set in the corridors of political and judicial power. She had the initial idea over lunch with a fellow lawyer in 2008 and wrote the first scene, but then got waylaid helping get Obama elected. When she finished the draft, she shared it with agents at various points, first in 2011, when it didn’t fly because, she says, the publishing industry pigeonholed her as a romance writer, and then again in 2015, when, she says, they “were dismissive of the idea that a president would be cavalier about American justice and felt that the Supreme Court just wasn’t that interesting to readers”. Then, she says, she “literally forgot” about the manuscript until 2019, when she was having conversations with Hollywood producers about adapting one of her romance novels and she mentioned it in passing. By then, Brett Kavanaugh’s controversial election to the Supreme Court (after being accused of sexual assault in his youth, an accusation he has always strongly denied) had upped the public’s interest in the institution and an American president with a cavalier attitude towards justice perhaps didn’t sound quite so implausible any more. The characters also draw without apology on Abrams’ own experiences. The eminent, cantankerous Justice Howard Wynn is “every curmudgeon I’ve ever worked with in politics and law and activism”, while Avery Keene, Wynn’s brilliant young black clerk, bears more than a passing resemblance to Abrams herself. At her white-shoe Atlanta law firm, Abrams was one of only two black lawyers. “Having been in places where people question why you’re there, they question who picked you, why are you the person who has this decisionmaking power but no authority – that is something I drew from experience.” Abrams grew up “working poor” in rural Mississippi, where her father was employed in a shipyard and her mother was a librarian before both became Methodist ministers. There was an emphasis on civil rights. Her parents and grandparents had been active in the civil rights protests of the Sixties in Mississippi, winning the right to vote only in 1968. “You would hear all these stories about what it meant to be in the midst of that movement, what it meant to be a young person in Mississippi during Jim
‘As a young black woman in Mississippi, I learnt if you don’t raise your hand, people won’t give you attention’ Crow [laws enforcing racial segregation that were in place until the mid-Sixties].” A similar emphasis was placed on reading and on watching public service television. “They expected us to want more.” It worked. Abrams is the second of six children. Her elder sister, Andrea, is the vicepresident of a college. Her younger sister, Lesley, is a federal judge. Richard is a social worker and Jeanine is president of Fair Count, Abrams’ organisation that works to ensure all Georgians are counted in the census. Her youngest brother, Walter, has a long history of addiction and mental health issues and has spent time in prison. He’s in recovery now. “It’s an addiction, so it’s always going to be a battle. Right now he’s in a good place.” She wrote her first novel at 12. At 16, she attended a “nerd summer camp for highachievers” in New York. At 17, at high school in Atlanta, where the family had relocated for her parents’ work, she was hired as an intern on a local congressional campaign, “basically a typist and a gofer”. When given the candidate’s speech to type up, she rewrote it and was formally hired as his speechwriter. “He didn’t win, but I don’t think it was the speeches,” she says. At 18 and an undergraduate at Spelman College in Atlanta, when her boyfriend dumped her, she took herself off to the computer lab and plotted out her professional future in a spreadsheet. “He thought I was too goal-oriented and not focused enough on him in our relationship and, in retrospect, he was right,” says Abrams. “But I was 18. I was much better at doing stuff than I was at dating. So, I decided, fine.” She lets out a soft chuckle. “You think I’m too ambitious now? Just wait. And then I started laying out all my ambitions.” These included becoming the author of a bestselling spy novel by 24, a “millionaire running a corporation” by 30 and mayor of Atlanta by 35. The spreadsheet has been tinkered with, but never cast aside. “Any time I hit one of the major goals, I’d keep track of where I thought I would be, where I am and then I update it to say where I’m going.” There was also a column for personal relationships. Abrams was to meet the man of her dreams and have two kids by the age of 28. When she missed the deadline, she shifted it to 32, then 41. Now, at 47, she keeps the column on the sheet, but the deadline is blank. She won a place at Yale, forged a career as a tax lawyer and was elected to Georgia’s state
Congress, only resigning her seat in 2017 to run for governor. She is expected to stand again against Kemp in 2022. Her opponents have already set up a group called Stop Stacey. But Abrams’ rapid rise has ruffled feathers. When there were whispers about her becoming Biden’s vice-president and she made it clear she would be keen, a Washington Post op-ed said Abrams was “embarrassing herself by openly campaigning for the job”. “The presumption that people need to read your mind in order to grant you access is just absurd,” she says. “As a young black woman growing up in Mississippi, I learnt that if you don’t raise your hand, people won’t give you attention.” Meanwhile her Republican critics noisily dispute her claim that she lost the 2018 gubernatorial race because of voter disenfranchisement (over the previous six years, 1.4 million Georgia voters had been expunged from voting records). Last month, the right-wing US magazine National Review put her on its cover, accusing her of “dishonesty and hysteria” and calling her “divisive” and “one of the great founts of disinformation in American political life”. And there is a broader backlash brewing, not just against Abrams herself, but against the work she has done to expand voter access. Along with Georgia, Fair Fight has worked in 20 US states – including key battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania – on absentee ballots, voting by post and early voting, all of which contributed to a turnout of more than 159 million in November, the highest turnout in US presidential history. Now, in the wake of that turnout, several states have brought in laws to restrict voter access again, cutting early voting times and restricting postal votes. “Republicans are gaming the system because they’re afraid of losing an election,” Abrams said last month. And, she believes, “These laws are a direct response to the same animus that led them to the Capitol on January 6.” The violent insurrection that day at the US Capitol came as no surprise to Abrams. “I’m certainly dismayed by the level of treachery that we saw, but I wouldn’t say that is new. I grew up in Mississippi, where the Confederate battle flag was the state flag. I moved to Georgia, where the Confederate battle flag was incorporated into the state flag. I don’t have the capacity for surprise at this.” But don’t misinterpret her lack of surprise as acceptance or negativity. “People ask if I’m an optimist or a pessimist and I say that I’m an ameliorist,” she says. “I say, ‘Look, the glass is half full and it’s probably poisoned.’ ” Her job, she says, “is to try to find the antidote”. n While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams is published by HarperCollins on May 27 (£14.99) The Times Magazine 49
The Post Office scandal ‘I can still hear the cell door
Harjinder Butoy is one of the 39 sub-postmasters who had their convictions for theft and false accounting overturned by the Court of Appeal last month. He reveals the devastating impact of being wrongly accused in a monumental miscarriage of justice REPORT Rachel Sylvester PORTRAIT Jude Edginton
Harjinder Butoy photographed at home with his wife, Balbinder, mother Satya Devi and father Kesar Singh
slamming behind me. I thought, “How will I survive?”’
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he first inkling Harjinder Butoy had that something might be wrong was when four auditors turned up at his post office and shop in the market town of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire. It was around 11.30 in the morning and he settled down with a cup of tea in his house at the back of the store while the two men and two women started to riffle through documents. He tried to relax but there was a niggle in the back of his mind because this was the second visit from Post Office bureaucrats in as many months. “They were walking around, looking in the back storeroom, checking my paperwork,” he says. “I just let them get on with it. Then they came to me and they said, ‘There’s £206,000 missing. Can you explain it?’ I was gobsmacked. I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea there was money missing.” The next moment two plain-clothes police officers burst through the door. “They said, ‘You’re under arrest for the theft of £206,000,’ ” Butoy recalls. “I was still in shock. You just don’t know what to think. I was saying to myself, ‘They’ve made a mistake here. It’ll be all right.’ ” He was taken to the police station where he was interviewed by the auditors. “They said, ‘We’ve got proof you’ve done these transactions, falsified figures and taken the cash.’ They kept saying, ‘You stole it, no matter what. You stole it.’ And I kept saying, ‘I haven’t done anything. I didn’t take any money.’ ” He was questioned for seven hours and while he was at the police station investigators returned to his home with a search warrant. They stripped the post office of stock, carried out boxes of papers and scooped up the cash that Butoy kept at home, carefully separated into different pots for wages, cash-and-carry visits and bills. His wife, Balbinder, was terrified. “I said, ‘I’ll show you where to go,’ ” she tells me. “But they said, ‘No, you have to stay here. You’re not allowed to move from this room,’ while all the officers went upstairs and searched.” When Butoy got home that evening, his home had been ransacked and the post office had been closed down. “They even changed the alarm codes,” he says. Four weeks later, he was charged with 11 counts of theft. “At that point I said to my solicitor, ‘We’ve got to find out what’s happening and where all this money has gone.’ I was really confused.” Within months he was in court. “I was convinced the jury would be on my side because I didn’t do it,” he says. “But I just couldn’t defend it because I had nothing to defend against. They were just bullies.” In 2008 Butoy was found guilty on ten of the eleven counts and sentenced to three years and three months in prison. Even as he heard the sentence being read out he was 52 The Times Magazine
Harjinder Butoy following the appeal verdict on April 23
“baffled” by what was happening to him. “I’ve never been in trouble like that, so I went in thinking everything’s going to be hunky-dory and I’ll be back home,” he says. “It hit me when I went into the cell and that door slammed behind me. That was the most horrible feeling. I thought I shouldn’t even be in here. That’s when I properly fell apart. I cried. I just didn’t know what to do. My head was all over the place. Honestly, I can still hear that door slamming behind me to this day. You’re thinking, ‘How am I going to survive?’ ” His wife and three young children did not even get the chance to say goodbye to him as he was led away from the courtroom in handcuffs. There are tears in Balbinder’s Jo Hamilton, whose conviction was also overturned
‘I still can’t believe this kind of thing goes on in the UK. We were guilty until we could prove our innocence’
eyes as she remembers how, when they got home, their oldest son, who was then eight, “sat on the stairs and cried. He just wanted his dad. Our world fell apart.” Butoy, now 44, is one of 39 sub-postmasters who had their fraud convictions quashed last month by the Court of Appeal after what has been described as the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. There is a post office next to the modest house in Chesterfield where he now lives and he grimaces as he points to it out of the window. The former sub-postmaster spent 18 months behind bars, was declared bankrupt and since coming out of prison has struggled to find work. He and Balbinder have had to sell their home and now rely on benefits. A wedding photograph in the hall is a reminder of a happier time. Balbinder looks stunning in an exquisite pink sari; Harjinder still has a full head of hair and wears a marigold garland. “When we got married we said we’d be retiring at the age of 44 or 45,” he says. “Ever since I left school I’d worked really hard. It’s amazing how, with a click of the finger, life changes.” They have not had a holiday for more than a decade but it is the emotional impact that has been hardest. “I lost all reputation and respect,” he explains. “That was my biggest loss. One minute you’re a pillar of the community and the next thing you’re nothing. You can see the avoidance, people talking behind your back. They say, ‘He’s been arrested – he must have stolen the money.’ As soon as I was found guilty, we lost everything.” The story of how a great British institution unfairly criminalised hundreds of law-abiding citizens is an astonishing tale of corporate cover-up, political mismanagement and personal injustice. Nearly 750 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were prosecuted by the Post Office between 2000 and 2014. They were charged with fraud, theft or false accounting on the basis of evidence from a flawed computer system called Horizon, which made money vanish overnight. A further 2,400 say they were dismissed or asked to make up shortfalls because of software errors. Many were forced to sell their homes to pay back money they had never stolen. Others were hounded out of their jobs or became outcasts in their villages. Marriages fell apart, friendships soured, families were destroyed and businesses ruined. Eleven people were sent to jail and one former postmaster, Martin Griffiths, committed suicide after he was falsely accused of stealing £60,000 from the post office in Ellesmere Port where he had worked for 20 years. Three died without knowing that their convictions had been overturned. Last month’s appeal court ruling is likely to be only the start of the attempt to make reparations. The Post Office is
Karen Wilson with a picture of her late husband, Julian, who did not live to see his name cleared
‘I don’t want to say the Post Office killed my husband, but it massively contributed. It just broke him’ now contacting 540 more former workers with potentially relevant convictions and seeking further information in another 100 cases. It is promising to help clear the names of hundreds of former sub-postmasters who it now admits were wrongly taken to court, and pay compensation, which could cost the taxpayer more than £350 million. Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Hull East who as a solicitor represented one of the accused, says there has been a “grotesque injustice” and a “cynical” lack of transparency from the Post Office as well as an appalling failure of ministerial oversight under successive administrations. “The idea that all these professionals of good character have all of a sudden started pinching is just for the birds,” he says. “If I put my five-yearold daughter in a room and explained this scenario to her, she would say, ‘Have you thought about the fact that it might be something else other than thieving?’ ” Philip Dunne, the Conservative MP for Ludlow, blames “groupthink” at the Post Office. “There was a corporate blindness to a problem. The ethos was to defend the position.”
What ended as a monumental travesty of justice began as a computer software problem. The Horizon system, designed by the Japanese technology giant Fujitsu, was introduced across the Post Office network in 1999. It was meant to manage transactions, accounting and stocktaking, replacing the old manual practices, but sub-postmasters soon started to notice bugs, discrepancies and errors. They raised concerns about inexplicable glitches but the complaints were dismissed as teething difficulties. Then Horizon began reporting cash shortfalls and sub-postmasters started having to plug the financial gaps. Those who could not find the money were taken to court. The human cost is vividly illustrated by the case of Jo Hamilton, a 65-year-old grandmother from Hampshire who was accused by the Post Office of taking £36,000 from the village shop she ran in rural South Warnborough. She embarked on a Kafkaesque battle with bureaucracy that began in 2003 and culminated in her conviction in 2008. “I started off with a £2,000 discrepancy that the [Post Office] help desk helped turn into £4,000. It grew and grew over about 18 months to £36,000 and I just didn’t know what to do. I used to cash up and [the system] would tell you that you had that amount of money in the till and you just say yes. It wasn’t because I was conspiring to defraud them. I didn’t have any choice. I couldn’t open the next day unless I agreed the figures.” The Post Office started demanding that she make up the difference in the accounts – “They said, ‘You’ve got to pay it or we’re going to dismiss you.’ ” She borrowed money from friends, maxed out her credit card and even remortgaged her house but she still did not have enough money. Eventually, the village clubbed together to settle the outstanding debt. The post office had been a social hub for the community and Hamilton was a well-loved local figure who used to deliver shopping to elderly people when they could not get out. She lost her job and ended up pleading guilty to false accounting to avoid a more serious charge of theft. On the day she was sentenced, 74 people from the village turned up at court in Winchester. “I was in this massive dock and I could hear them all clattering about above me because we’d all been in the café before it. It was like the village hall,” she says. “The vicar stood up in the witness box and said, ‘If she goes to prison, please could you make it not for long because we love her.’ ” Hamilton’s probation officer had told her there was a 75 per cent chance that she would go to prison, so she had turned up at court with a bag. “I had always intended to do an HNC [higher national certificate] in equine science and I’d never got round to it, so I packed the first module along with 14 pairs of pants,”
she says. “I went to Marks and bought myself some multipacks. I thought, I’m not having someone else’s underwear. I had planned it like a military exercise.” When the judge told her he was not going to give her a custodial sentence, she says “there were tears streaming down” her face. She remembers noticing that the board outside the courtroom said “the Queen versus Josephine Hamilton”. “I thought, ‘I wonder if she knows. This is crazy.’ I still can’t believe we’re living in the UK and this kind of thing goes on. We were guilty until we could prove our innocence.” She is pleased that her conviction has now been quashed but she is also furious. “They’ve taken a third of my life,” she says. “It’s such a waste.” Having lost her business, she now works as a cleaner. Recently, she went to help out at her granddaughter’s school and was told that she could not be left alone in the classroom with the children because of her criminal record. There is, she suggests, an imbalance in the handling of the case. “They say, ‘We’ll have a half-baked inquiry. Don’t look in any of the cupboards where the bodies are buried.’ Do you really think we’re going to take that? I’m on a mission now. I’m so angry. Everybody has got to be compensated because it’s wrong. They’ve stolen our money, and people need to be held to account for what they’ve done.” For many of the sub-postmasters and their families, last month’s court victory was bittersweet. Karen Wilson still has yellowing newspaper cuttings pinned to the wall of her Redditch home when I arrive to visit her. She shows me photographs of her husband, Julian, a talented musician and amateur dramatics performer, who gave up his job as a company director to run the local post office because he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family. He died of bowel cancer 5 years ago, 12 years after he was convicted of false accounting over an unexplained shortfall of more than £27,000 at his Astwood Bank post office. “I don’t want to say the Post Office killed him, but it massively contributed,” she says, tears rolling down her face. “He was a fabulous man and it just broke him.” Like Jo Hamilton, the Wilsons knew everybody in the village. “It’s an older population and some of them would come in three times a day for different things. Julian would say, ‘I’ll name the first ten,’ and he’d be right because they were such creatures of habit,” Wilson laughs. “You’ve got the butcher’s, the baker, the winemaker, the florist’s, all of us in a row.” Once, the 89-year-old lady who lived opposite had a burst water tank. “Julian went across and did all of it, dealt with the insurance. He was good with people.” Children would come into the shop on the way to school. “I used to joke with them – ‘Do you really want 20 Haribos The Times Magazine 53
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for breakfast?’ It was all this banter and the business just grew and grew.” At the same time, though, the Horizon system was creating the impression of a financial black hole. Julian kept raising concerns with head office, but he was ignored. “He was very meticulous. We would be in there until 11.30pm, midnight sometimes, trying to sort it out,” Wilson says. “There were journal rolls like toilet paper everywhere. It was so obvious something was going wrong.” Then, one day, “The fraud squad came and went through everything. The garden shed, the garbage, the car, everything. And they said to Julian, ‘Where’s the money? Where are the cars? Where are the holidays? Where’s the jewellery?’ Julian said, ‘I’ve stolen nothing,’ but they charged him with theft and false accounting. He was just beside himself.” Soon afterwards he was issued with confiscation orders under the Proceeds of Crime Act. “They confiscated the house, the car, the business, the bank accounts, the personal accounts, everything,” Wilson says. “I have to admit I just collapsed on the floor and cried.” When they ran out of money, she says, “I picked up my watch, my engagement ring, all the jewellery that he had bought me over 30 years. I got £900 for everything. Julian said, ‘Where did you get that from?’ and when I told him he just cried.” Like many of the other sub-postmasters, Wilson was advised to plead guilty to false accounting to avoid going to jail for theft. “He got 300 hours’ community service. He had to go and clean graves,” his widow says. Gradually, his health deteriorated. “He developed diabetes and glaucoma; he was very, very stressed.” In 2015 he was diagnosed with bowel cancer, and he died in August 2016. “It is just such a massive wrong. He said to me, ‘I’m buying a British institution, a post office.’ He was so proud of it, and they were so cruel.” It is the clash between the humanity of the sub-postmasters and the brutal “computer says no” attitude of the Post Office that is so shocking. The small businessmen and women were punctilious in their attempts to abide by the rules, but this was then used against them. They would spot a discrepancy in the books, ring the helpline (or the “hell line” as they would call it) and then follow the instructions they were given to make the sums add up. That was then categorised as false accounting. There was a clear pattern. As a trial neared, they would be offered a plea bargain under which they would plead guilty to false accounting in return for the Post Office dropping a more serious charge of theft. That meant the Post Office did not have to produce the dodgy evidence from Horizon. Even as dozens of people were being arrested, individual sub-postmasters were being told that they were the only one affected
Paula Vennells in 2018, when still CEO of the Post Office
‘A lot of sub-postmasters are saying, “I’ve cleared my name. Let’s move on.” I can’t. They’ve destroyed everybody’s life’ by the financial glitches. It was a systematic attempt to disguise the scale of the problem with the multimillion-pound technology and pin the blame on innocent people. In their ruling last month the judges said that the “failures of investigation and disclosure” were so egregious that the prosecution of the Horizon cases was “an affront to the conscience of the court”. By insisting that the software was reliable and refusing to consider the possibility that it might be to blame for the shortfalls, the Post Office “sought to reverse the burden of proof… and proceeded as if it were for the accused to prove that no such loss had occurred”. After last month’s ruling Tim Parker, the chairman of the Post Office, said that the company was “extremely sorry for the impact on the lives of these postmasters and their families that was caused by historical failures”. In a statement, the company said that it had taken several measures “to overhaul culture, practices and operating procedures” and introduce greater transparency. But many of the sub-postmasters would like to see tougher action taken against the senior former Post Office executives who have been accused of ruining hundreds of lives. There are calls for Paula Vennells, the former chief executive, to be stripped of her CBE, awarded in 2019 for services to the Post Office, and for her to repay bonuses of more than £2.2 million she received as part of her £4.5 million earnings during her seven-year tenure. After the ruling she put out a statement saying she was “truly sorry for the suffering caused… as a result of the convictions”. Neil Hudgell, a lawyer for several of the sub-postmasters, says people must be made to take responsibility for their actions. “These
decisions aren’t made by automatons. At the end of the day there is someone at the top of the Post Office food chain that is making decisions that are being rolled out, so you end up with a culture of secrecy and cover-up. We’ve got the biggest miscarriage of justice and it’s not just the numbers of people, it’s the period of behaviour. You had this going on for almost 15 years.” He believes ministers in successive administrations also have questions to answer because the government is the sole shareholder in Post Office Limited. “In any organisation, responsibility sits at the top and even if there’s a lack of knowledge, there’s an obligation to investigate and to find out. It’s not that there hasn’t been noise over the years. The overall question is, who knew what when?” Following the judgment, the government has rejected calls to extend the current inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT disaster, which does not have the legal power to call witnesses or cross-examine them under oath. Margot James, a former Conservative business minister who oversaw the Post Office between July 2016 and January 2018, believes there should be a full public inquiry. “When something has gone this wrong and affected so many people I think they’re entitled to an explanation,” she says. “The focus of an inquiry should be on making sure this never happens again. If I have a regret, it would be not asking more searching questions. There was a reluctance to dig back over it all.” For the sub-postmasters, this is personal rather than political. A few days after the court ruling, the Butoys went back to Suttonin-Ashfield for the first time since Harjinder was charged. The post office there has been replaced by a Polish food store, but they wanted to visit their old neighbour. “She’s a lovely lady – she even wrote me a character reference for the judge,” he says. “I’ve wanted to go and see her but I always said, ‘I’m not going back until I clear my name.’ ” She is 85 now. “We didn’t know when we knocked on the door whether she was going to be alive. As soon as she saw us she cried; we all cried. She had seen in the newspaper that we’d been cleared.” Those in the area who had previously vilified him had also heard the news. “I’m smiling, I kept my head up. I’ve proven myself to all the people who thought I did it,” he says. “That was more important to me.” There is still unfinished business, though. “A lot of sub-postmasters are saying, ‘I’ve had enough now. I’ve cleared my name; we’ll get compensation. Let’s move on.’ I can’t. They’ve destroyed everybody’s life. It’s not fair. I’ve cleared my name, but there is only going to be justice when somebody on the other side gets charged. We all need to stick together and fight this now.” n The Times Magazine 55
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4. £155, reiss.com. 5. £155, reiss.com. 6. Ellie Delphine in Dior. 7. £69, hush-uk.com.
Ralph Lauren
Beauty Lesley Thomas Race you to Zara’s new make-up counter Its affordable cosmetics range is a game-changer ara make-up is here, at last. The store that we can all rely on as a fashion antidepressant has produced a cheering beauty collection. Part of me wonders what took it so long. But really, this is perfect timing. Our make-up bags are in need of a refresh right now. I’m not desperate to buy clothes. Make-up, on the other hand… Bring me everything in every shade and don’t hold back on the glitter. This is exactly what Zara has done: 130 shades of lip, eye, nail and cheek colours have landed online and in selected stores. The collection is joyous, but not childish, and everything is less than £20. You can’t launch a beauty range now without considering sustainability and, impressively, a great many of the products are refillable. Honestly, I have not seen high street make-up this thrilling since Miss Selfridge did make-up when I was a teenager. Who remembers Doris Karloff and Iron Lady lipsticks from Kiss and Makeup? H&M has had a good go at beauty and has some fantastic colours, especially for nails, but the quality is not always awesome and the packaging is a bit teenagerish. Zara’s make-up has been created by celebrated British make-up artist Diane Kendal, who helped to create the brilliant range for Marc Jacobs, and I can see some similarities in quality and aesthetic. There is a big focus on lips in Zara’s line, with no fewer than six textures (matt, satin, balm, semi-matt, oil and gloss). I love the
TOM JACKSON
Z
Lesley loves
It was created by the make-up artist who worked on Marc Jacobs’ brilliant range, and I see some similarities in quality
Metallic eyeshadow
Creamy glide-on texture
Customisable mix and match shades
Suits all complexions
Chanel Les 4 Ombres MultiEffect Quadra Eyeshadow in Bouquet Ambré, £47 (johnlewis.com)
Zara Eye Color In 6 Refillable Eyeshadow Palette in Clash Out, £17.99 (zara.com)
Dior 3 Couleurs Tri(O)blique Pure Glow in Triple Bloom, £49.50 (dior.com)
Ultimatte lippy in the optimistically bright red shade Winner. It’s non-drying, long-lasting and tremendous value at £11.99 (£6.99 for the refill; zara.com). It’s one of my all-time top reds. There’s a stick balm with a hint of gold called Halo (£11.99) that’s definitely a keeper. The skinny, satin, semi-matt Stiletto lipsticks (£9.99) remind me of the Ultra Slim lipsticks from Hourglass, which cost three times as much. The eyeshadow palettes are another highlight. If you like Pat McGrath’s eye shades but not the big prices, the Zara ones will not disappoint. I’ve fallen in love with one called Clash Out (£17.99). It’s full of disco shades of mustard, aubergine and black, which don’t sound at all real-world wearable, but are. There’s good news too if you’re in the market for some new brushes. There are six great-quality, chic-looking ones for eyes and face, including a superb brush (£5.99) for smoking out your eyeliner that’s almost as good as the best one in the world made by MAC, the 219 pencil brush (£21; maccosmetics. co.uk), but smaller, handier and cheaper. While you’re at Zara, be aware that it has some great fragrances made by Jo Malone. Look for the ones called Emotions. These are truly great value at £25.99. Decent, inexpensive scent is not easy to find. n instagram.com/lesleyjthomas
Online limited edition
Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Eye Filter in Eyes of a Star, £42 (charlottetilbury.com)
Comes with bronzer and blusher
Long-wearing creamy texture
e.l.f. Jen Atkin Let’s e.l.f.Ing Do It Palette in Medium-Deep, £14 (elfcosmetics.co.uk)
Chanel Les Beiges Eyeshadow Palette in Deep, £48 (chanel.com) The Times Magazine 57
Eating out Giles Coren ‘Kol is the kind of highconcept new restaurant that used to be so… normal. I’d get along pronto, if I were you’ Kol
TOM JACKSON
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60 The Times Magazine
he opening in London of a world-class, genre-defying, entirely new and original modern upscale Mexican restaurant such as Kol, which would have been a nailed-on gastronomic highlight in any other year, was simply inconceivable in 2020. Which is why it very nearly didn’t happen, and why, when it did happen, briefly, between lockdowns, it swiftly unhappened, and then happened again, after the second one, but not in the way it would have liked – with parties and photos and endless hoopla – but with just a nervous adjustment of face masks, a spritz of hand sanitiser and a shy opening of doors. I barrelled along not long after that second attempt to open, in mid-December last year, entirely unprepared for it. Like everyone else, I had spent at least six months of the year not going to restaurants at all. And when I did go, it was mostly for restricted menus at local pubs and curry houses, at funny times, without many of the people I would have liked to be with, under heated gazebos on pavements, masked to the eyeballs, fibbing about my circumstances (“Yes, it’s work”; “Yes, these women are both my wife”), inordinately grateful for whatever I got, and worried it would all be taken away from me at any moment. But there hadn’t been anything new. I did know that Kol would be some kind of
supersmart, glitzily etiolated modern Mexican joint because the guy in charge, Santiago Lastra, launched the Noma Mexico pop-up in Tulum in 2017, which was a massive big hairy deal for a lot of people (the late Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold loved it so much he died shortly afterwards) and marked him out as the coming man. But it wasn’t until I walked in and handed over my coat at reception and turned the corner into the room that the truth of where I was sank in and I smiled, invisibly, beneath my snotencrusted face covering. For here was high restauration, dreamt of in another time and executed at great expense to scream both “Mexico!” and “Marylebone!” in the same breath. A bespoke and entirely unique Marylebonexico, if you will. I don’t have to look up the design philosophy online (which I am sure you can) to know that some top-end restaurant fitter spent many months travelling the country from Oaxaca to Yucatán in search of inspiration, rifling the junk shops of Mexico City for these spot-lit clay pots and funky bits of wood, imbibing the spirit of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Luis Barragán to arrive at this floor, these black clay tiles, these floppy gold lampshades, these marble tables and muscular oak chairs, these beams, the burnt-orange and ochre tones, the art, the rubber plants and succulents, the steampunk dark brown overalls of the staff… And then these three central islands, beneath giant, supermodern extraction units housed in beautifully crafted boxes of, I’m guessing, reclaimed wood of noble
Kol 9 Seymour Street, London W1 (020 3829 6888; kolrestaurant.com) Cooking 8 Sourcing 9 Ideas 9 Score 8.67 Price The 6-course menu is £70/head; margaritas are £12.
Central American origin, at which immaculately chiselled chefs bustle at their prep, in full view of the gawping (but socially distanced and numerically reduced) diners, just as they do at, well, obviously, Noma, but also, no doubt, the traditional tortilla stations and chipotleries of Chiapas and Veracruz. It is just the kind of high-concept, simultaneously traditional and futuristic new restaurant that used to be so… normal. When ten or twenty restaurants were opening in London every week, the big ones had to make this kind of effort to get noticed. But in late 2020 – when we were glad of a plastic tent in a Wetherspoon’s car park and a cold Scotch egg to make drinking our pint of soapy lager legal, well, it seemed kind of… unnecessary? But after a couple of cracking margaritas, crisply made and beautifully served in lovely glassware (on a small square of hessian as culturally appropriate and deeply thought out as any beer mat in England), things began to make sense. In a little brown hand-turned bowl of shimmering Mexicanity there was a shot of seaweed and chilli broth that was nourishing and darkly complex, and then its polar gustatory opposite: a palm-sized chalupa (a kind of flat, baked, unfolded taco, concave as a saucer) topped with the freshest, brightest Cornish crab with a pistachio mole, a blob of fermented gooseberry, a couple of microherbs and scatter of yellow flowers and, for a twobite cocktail snack, it was all quite heavenly. Santiago Lastra is all about the finest British seasonal ingredients presented in traditional
Mexican arrangements with supermodern Michelin three-star technique. Only his chocolate, chilli and corn are imported from Mexico (and I guess those pistachios aren’t foraged on the banks of the A40 either) where he focuses on small-scale growers of heritage varieties rather than your big exploiters of supercharged GM grain strands who rape the planet and impoverish the people in the name of the bogroll-tasting cheapo corn wraps you lob in the basket at Lidl for a Mexican Nite that, thank God, never ends up happening. Next up (it’s a four, six or nine-course tasting menu, no à la carte, but a promise, when I asked, to get us through the six in two hours, which they did) was a sort of ceviche of kohlrabi (you’ll notice a lot of sort ofs and kindas in this review because it’s all fairly hard to describe – I don’t know all that much about Mexican cooking and, if I did, it would all be getting turned upside down by Santiago’s modernisations anyway) that was a little cold and bloodless for my liking. But then, oh my word, heat and blood in abundance with a soft taco full of the fat body meat of a Scottish langoustine with smoked chilli and sea buckthorn (a favourite ingredient of Noma’s René Redzepi), prepared by the silent team of bustling hunks at the central section, and brought to the table by a young guy whose mask and smoking hot Mexican handsomeness make him look like a cross between Zorro and Superman, so he just must have been Santiago himself (and if he wasn’t, Santiago should fire him, for stealing his thunder).
With it, he proffered a small clay pot containing the front end of the langoustine, claws reaching skywards for a rescue that isn’t going to come, whose brains we were invited to squeeze from its head over the steaming taco before folding and scoffing, and did, and were delighted. You could not ask a shellfish to give more than this one had. There followed a braised short rib (coloradito) whose chocolatey flesh sloughed off its blade of bone like Princess Margaret shedding her mink at the front door of Quaglino’s in the 1950s, with bowls of goodies including carrots roasted in beef fat and quince mole; and pork cheek carnitas, the meat arriving in a vast, pig-ornamented bowl under a windowpane of golden crackling that our guy smashed into the meat before we dug in to pile it onto Santiago’s superb tortillas, full of heft and a nutty interest of their own, with cabbage leaves and a pear and gooseberry salsa. There is something special about finished dishes of such quality being presented almost ready to eat, leaving just a bit of scooping and folding to the jaded punter, that is very postCovid, faintly redolent of all those almost finished meals we bought from our favourite local restaurants to support them, which had to be brought home and given the final touches in a way that made us feel, just a teeny bit, like we were actually cooking. If anything was missing for me, it was the fiery chilli sauces you get in less fashionable joints and that I rather associate with this sort of food, but perhaps those are inauthentic in some way that I couldn’t possibly know and, obviously, they would obliterate a lot of the subtlety in these grand presentations. Dessert took the form of perfect little corn husk parcels containing rich, gooey chocolate cake steamed in the leaf with clean, bright corn husk ice cream. It was a cracking restaurant. And I was all set to run the review that you’ve just read in the first week of January, when poor Santiago had to fling the tarpaulin over his barely opened baby for a third time. So I packed it away in a drawer, and waited for my moment to pull it out, blow the dust off and file it again. And on Tuesday that moment came, when Kol opened up for a third time, now with a standalone mezcaleria on the ground floor (which managed just a single service in December before being closed down and is thus having its grand opening again this week). I’d get along pronto, if I were you. There is no telling how long it’s going to last this time. n The Times Magazine 61
LIFESTYLE
LIFESTYLE
Beta male Robert Crampton
TOM JACKSON
‘My wife says it’s time to throw away my Davy Crockett rifle. But, I protest, my dad made it…’
“I think this has had it,” Nicola said, holding a painted piece of wood in one hand and two broken broomsticks, nailed together long ago, in the other. Screwed into the first piece of wood were springs, hinges and levers. “Oh, no,” I replied, taking the tragic timber from my wife and cradling it in my arms. Cradling it, indeed, just as Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, might once have done almost 200 years ago at the Alamo, these shattered, worm-eaten stumps being all that was now left of his famous Kentucky rifle, nicknamed “Old Betsy”. Well, sort of. The actual rifle is safe and well in the Alamo museum in San Antonio, Texas. My wooden version – I hesitate to call it a replica – was fashioned for me by my dad in 1972 for a school fancy-dress parade. My mum, meanwhile, had sewn me a suitably fringed costume. It wasn’t made of buckskin – more threadbare brown towelling – but it was rather fetching all the same. My headgear, a homage to Crockett’s famous coonskin cap, was an old fake fur hat donated by my nana Amy. With what, I fear, may have been the actual tail of an actual stoat attached for verisimilitude. I can’t remember what I wore on my feet. Wellies, possibly. Not only did I not win, I failed even to place. This was before the days of “All shall have prizes” in state education, but even so, there seemed, to my tear-filled eight-yearold eyes, an awful lot of runners-up on the podium. Your disconsolate future columnist not, however, among them. Never mind, almost a half-century later, I reckon I’ve just about got over it. Besides, three years later, in one of those plucky comebacks from the depths of adversity we all must sometimes make in life, my interpretation of the flagrantly northernist Ecky Thump character from The Goodies saw me coast to victory. I always kept the rifle, a treasured memento of my dad’s devotion. He was no sort of a handyman, my dad, and yet, as a fake armourer, he showed promise. When you pulled the trigger, the hammer (cannibalised from my extensive collection of toy revolvers) actually clicked forward onto a metal plate. By the standards of 1972, that was pretty exciting. And now here it was, a heap of busted wood and rusty metal. Why? Because when I say “treasured memento”, history does not entirely bear that out. The rifle has spent most of the
intervening years in my parents’ garage. Which makes me think my dad was prouder of it than I was. Or maybe it’s just that you get more storage space in Hull than you do in London. That said, when the time came to clear the house after my mum’s death five years ago, I took the rifle home rather than to the tip. Propping it next to the wood store in the back garden, I duly forgot about it. Old Betsy, while not wholly exposed to the elements, wasn’t exactly protected from them either. Hence, no doubt, its pitiful state five winters on. My contribution had been to paint the name in suitably swirly letters on the butt. Not my butt, the rifle’s. Painting “Old Betsy” in Humbrol enamels on my backside would not only have been strange, but fiendishly difficult, requiring a degree of dexterity and suppleness I have never possessed, certainly not as a fat little eight-year-old chappie. Besides, we didn’t call backsides butts in 1972. We called them bums. Or arses, obviously. “I think it might be time to say goodbye,” said Nicola, interrupting my posteriologically based artistic musings. That prompted a familiar rant about how she’s always trying to get me to ditch the many items of sentimental value hanging around in my room. “The other day,” I seethed, “you even tried to persuade me to bin my greataunt Elizabeth’s [another Old Betsy, it has just struck me] certificate admitting her to the College of Nursing in 1925.” “You never even knew the woman.” “Yes, I did. We used to visit her in Bath in the early Seventies. Around the same time my dad was crafting the much loved heirloom I now hold in two bits in my hands. She shared a flat with her long-time companion Marjorie in that famous Georgian crescent. It was a big deal,” I added, slyly playing the feminist card, “for a woman to have a profession in 1925. I’m going to get this framed. “And what’s more, I’m going to keep Old Betsy and restore her to her former glory, such as it was. And then put her in pride of place on a rack above the door to my office. Like old homesteaders used to do with their weaponry way out west. And indeed, many modern-day Americans in the same regions still do. Only my firearm is, er, pretend. “You see if I don’t!” n robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2021. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately.