Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies [Paperback]

It’s hard to strike a tone which isn’t too gushing in commenting on this book because I think Francis Wheen is easily the best journalist working in Britain today. His avowed purpose is tell you what you couldn’t have found out or worked out for yourself, which ought not to be such a rarity, but is scarcely to be found among the downloaded-off-the-Internet trite nonsense that fills most newspapers these days. I knew that Wheen could be relied on for actual information and insight but what rather surprised me when reading this book is just how plain funny his writing is. I think a right-winger is not going to like his opinions but will enjoy the book anyway just for the brilliant and totally hilarious putdowns of New Labour amongst many, totally deserving, others.

It is also nice to read somebody who uses cultural references, but not as a means of demonstrating his own superiority. What I mean by that is he does not fake an assumption that everybody has read the same books he has (the pompous ‘as we all know’ kind of attitude), and therefore actually tells you something about say, Machiavelli. Of course, what the ‘as we all know’ often hides is the ignorance of the person writing but Wheen puts so much thought and research into what he writes he does not need to bluff. I had the sensation of being ‘improved’ by this i.e. educated, but it’s such a great read it didn’t seem like effort: a win-win situation.

Although the title mentions 1991 – 2001 most of the pieces here are from the later half of that period and have clearly been chosen for continued relevance. The point Wheen himself makes is that perspective is vital as in ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfil it’ and none of this writing loses resonance for being a few years old. All in all, blooming brilliant and compulsory reading for anybody with the slightest interest in politics, current affairs, journalism or good books in general.

To my mind, Francis Wheen, has gone down hill in recent years from the heady of heights of this book and his two brilliant biographies (Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions and Karl Marx). I put it down to the company he keeps, in particular Oliver Kamm, one time hedge fund-ist, self declared lefty and pedant in chief for The Times; and David Aronovitch, smug-alec par excellence whom I last came across puffing up David Milliband, likewise in The Times. But all this was in the future. This collection of journalism from the 1990's and the first couple of years of the millennium sees Wheen in full stride, dissenting in his singular and seriously funny style against the perceived wisdom of the day, sniffing out hypocrisy and hum-bug with un-erring accuracy.

His range of targets is laudably wide, and includes many prominent figures of that period. There was no honeymoon period vis-à-vis Tony Blair for our Francis, he smelt him out in early on when Blair was in opposition. Not the only writer to do so (Blair was and is an open invitation for satirical writers), but no other writer skewers him with quite as much skill and wit. Likewise with John Major's and his most (only?) favourable attribute: his alleged "decentness", which Wheen rationally appraises and finds to be overstated to say the least.

Lower order figures come under scrutiny, including a well deserved mauling for Robert Maxwell's mendacious minions within the Labour Party not a few of whom re-surfaced (unlike Captain Bob) under Blair, for example Helen Liddell ("I never worked for Robert Maxwell"), "The truth is slightly different [retorts Wheen]. During the 1988 Commonwealth Games [while Maxwell's director of corporate affairs] she clung to him so closely that at one point she even follows him into the gents lavatory - a scene that was recorded for posterity by a BBC TV documentary crew".

The focus isn't purely on politicians, Wheen also writes about literature, class, the media industry and a variety of other subjects. Even when I didn't agree with him, and his piece on the Nato attack on Serbia is one that I thought a little disingenuous, he still makes pertinent points.

"Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies" contains some of the best journalism on the Major and early Blair eras. Wheen's wit and sense of fun are ideal companions for revisiting that depressing period. This book is one that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend and shall no doubt read again.

Nowadays the deputy editor of "Private Eye", Francis Wheen was once upon a time one of the very best, if not the best, columnists in the business. Unlike a great deal of his contemporaries he did not overzealously push a political agenda (though he is very much of the left), but adopted a different and singular approach. Through a combination of scrupulous research (something rare in newspaper writing - just google a few statistics vaguely relevant to your subject, seems to be the way forward now) and a mischievous lightness of touch he unearthed, in a seemingly casual manner, the deceit, dissembling and hypocrisy endemic in the political life of both the right and left, not to mention the way apparently agonised-over governmental 'choices' almost always ended up those choices that favoured ever more market fundamentalism - a recurring theme in this book.

Inevitably there are one or two pieces that seem inconsequential; the law of averages practically demands it given the amount of material here. But that's nitpicking considering the wealth of good stuff. Wheen's own 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World' pilfers a fair bit from this collection's acidic attacks on astrology and self-help literature, for example. But stronger targets are Jack Straw (the most proudly illiberal Home Secretary we've ever had, as Wheen sees him), Rupert Murdoch (Murdoch's biography, reviewed herein, gets short shrift for all the shady stuff it leaves out), Ted Heath (hobnobbing with the same Chinese officials behind the Tiananmen Square massacre, then attacking people who questioned this), and Jim Callaghan, whose disasterous prime ministership ushered in the Thatcher era...

There are also quirkier digressions, such as a piece on the way both politics and the class system in England always seem somehow bound up with the playing of cricket and a guide on how to write a bestselling politician's autobiography (surprisingly, details of your sex life do not go down well - Alan Clark's memoirs were an anomaly in this regard). Not to mention some immensely entertaining riffs on the essential absurdity of being in the Secret Service - Wheen considers the American conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche Jr. to hold ideas no more eccentric than the entrance qualifications required for MI5.

There are, in fact, too many highlights to list. Suffice to say, "Private Eye"'s gain is the newspaper world's considerable loss.