Tony Blair, Jim Davidson and the gangland thug – more crazy tales from war-torn Iraq
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Version 0 of 1. With the Chilcot report into the Iraq war due to make landfall sometime in the 25th century – it is expected to be a Buck Rogers plotline – the search for enlightenment on that most emotive of recent conflicts continues. Our thanks, then, to cruelly misunderstood funnyman Jim Davidson, who – on the evidence of a recent interview – should at least be given the chance to star in an appendix to Sir John Chilcot's million-word report. Lost in Showbiz came to said interview via the Daily Mail, though the paper declines to credit what appears to be its source – a chat Jim had with the website Broadway Baby, with a view to promoting his forthcoming Edinburgh fringe show. So without further ado, please take your seats for the journey to 2003. According to Jim, he was in Iraq the day after the first phase of the war ended as part of his work with the British Forces Foundation, when he was mistaken for none other than Tony Blair. "I thought: 'I'm quite flattered'," recalls Jim. "And then I thought: 'Oh fuck, I'll be shot.'" No such tragedy occurred, as we now know: Jim would live to be questionably rehabilitated as the winner of this year's Celebrity Big Brother, while his looky-likey would go on to star in various adventures in extreme wealth accumulation, as well as a note in which Rupert Murdoch's wife appeared to have been possessed by a lovesick 12-year-old who wished to pet him like a My Little Pony. But back in the day, Jim thought it might be funny to let the then PM know about the case of mistaken identity that had befallen him in Iraq, so he sent him a letter detailing the incident. To which, he claims, he was sent a handwritten reply in which Mr Blair poured his heart out on the matter of the war. "He seemed convinced there were weapons of mass destruction," Jim now recalls. "He wrote to me saying they had found lots of graves, over 200,000 bodies of people reported missing" – really? – "and he said it is only a matter of time before they find these types of weapons." Totally. While we're waiting, though, Jim remains puzzled. "For him to handwrite that to me," he muses today, "I mean, why would he need to persuade me?" Why indeed? Lost in Showbiz can only tell you that Mr Tony seems to have been in a very strange headspace at the time, though the psychiatric history of the period appears to have been tactfully masked in the various bystander accounts of those years which have since appeared. But there are other sources. In fact, Jim's revelation bears striking similarities with a tale we covered when I worked on the Diary column of this newspaper, dating from around the same time in 2003, which featured a man called John Rollinson. Rollinson – AKA "Gaffer" – was a gangland figure of some small repute, having done various stretches for violent crime and been recruited to the National Front and whatnot. In 2003, he wrote to congratulate Blair on his war, only for something a smidge odd to happen. To wit: the prime minister called him at his Essex home, just for a chat. "Is that John Rollinson?" Blair reportedly began, in a conversation Downing Street had to confirm had taken place. "I don't know," replied Gaffer. "You rang me." But after this slightly awkward start, the two struck up a chat about the war. Rather like Davidson, though, Gaffer's instinctive – and perhaps reasonable – thought was: what in the name of sanity is this man doing getting in touch with me? And you know, maybe there is something faintly weird in a member of the public being called at home by the prime minister – presumably as an activity designed by No 10 staff to fan up their emotionally bruised boss – and needily engaged in discussion. Still, thank heavens Blair wasn't frittering his time away on some insanely irrelevant displacement activity, such as belatedly coming up with line one in an Iraq reconstruction plan. Where Davidson doesn't quite keep the self-regard from his account, however, Gaffer seemed to have thought rather less of the PM for talking to him. "He did ring and I just wanted to say: 'Not now, mate, not now!'" he recounted. "I told him to read my book, then he won't ring again." The book in question turned out to be Rollinson's recently released life story, a tome brought to the market by the estimable John Blake Publishing, and entitled Gaffer: If You Cross Me, I Swear I Will Rip You Apart With My Bare Hands. The work began in medias res, if memory serves, with Gaffer headbutted by the landlord of his local for being drunk and abusive. He told how he drove home, changed his shirt, and smacked the landlord about a bit, before being floored once more. Back home he went again, and availed himself of another shirt, and a carving knife. "I told my wife, Wendy: 'He's gonna die, the bastard.' I was like a maniac … We traded blow for blow, a brutal blood-and-guts battle … Because I was so out of it by now, I didn't get the chance to stab him … Finally I collapsed, exhausted, defeated." In hospital a week later, once he's come round from the coma, a visiting friend has something to ask. "'You went back three times, Gaffer, why didn't you go back a fourth?' I just said, 'I ran out of shirts.'" Whether Blair ever luxuriated in such tales is impossible to know, but they clearly emanated from the sort of character whose approval would be the kitemark for any war you could conceivably start. For his part, Gaffer rightly predicted the 2005 result. "I think [Blair] will win the next election," he told us. "He has the support of the underworld." So what have we learned from the combined oddness of these two accounts? I suppose it's good to discover that Blair was talking to someone at the time. It wasn't the cabinet, as we know. But was it a kitchen cabinet of sorts – a crack force of geopolitical experts which included Gaffer and Jim Davidson? And, if so, who on earth were the others? If Dave Courtney and Jethro could get in touch to rule themselves out, it would at least be a start. |