Mackenzie: brought to book

And now look at him. Sitting on the plush, red leather benches of the House of Lords. Influencing Government policy on law and order. The ear of prime ministers and home secretaries, having risen through the ranks of the police with uncommon speed. And an apartment in Tenerife. It's not surprising he sometimes sits on those benches and pinches himself.

"I'm still in awe," he says. "I look at the ceiling and I look at the throne and I look across the chamber, and I see prime ministers, home secretaries, people I admired, some that I respected, and to see those people and to be able to talk to them and have a drink with them is a tremendous honour. It's certainly something you couldn't build into your career plan."

We're in the upstairs sitting room of Brian Mackenzie's - Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate since 1998 - house in Shincliffe village, just outside Durham. He's looking relaxed and tanned, in a cavernous armchair. Here, the leather is white.

The occasion is to promote his autobiography, Two Lives of Brian, published by The Memoir Club. It's given him an opportunity to reflect on his childhood, growing up in Darlington, Dodmire Infants and then Eastbourne Secondary after failing the 11-plus. He got an apprenticeship as a fitter at British Rail's workshops in the town and began to go to night school.

"It was only then that I started to take an interest in academic work, and also started to shine. I won the class prize," he remembers. "This is when I started to realise that I could take things in, and I realised the value of knowledge if I wanted to advance from the shop floor."

But at 20 he gave up his apprenticeship - much against his parents' wishes - to join the police, inspired, he says, by a sergeant he met when he went to report a stolen bike. As a PC, he twice came top of the sergeant's exam - "virtually unknown then" - only to be turned down in the interviews. But once he made sergeant there was no stopping him. "I was a detective in three years, which again was quite remarkable in those days," he says.

"I went from sergeant to superintendent within three years, which was amazing. That was the luck of the draw." The luck was that he saw a Home Office job advertised, with the rank of superintendent, which demanded an unusual combination of qualifications. He happened to possess them, so he applied

He had always been politically minded - he used to set the world to rights with childhood friend Tom Sawyer, later to be general secretary of the Labour Party, in the Red Lion in Darlington - and became an active member of the Superintendents' Association.

He became chairman of the Durham branch, but it was when he became the organisation's national vice-president that he began the next stage of his career.

"The superintendents were the meat between the Police Federation and the chief officers: we were the voice that nobody heard. I said, if they want to raise the profile of the organisation, they would have to use the media. I was quite prepared to speak on their behalf.

"That is exactly what we did and we put the Superintendents' Association on the map. We became the lead body for the police service," he says.

As a result, the association's vice-president, and later president, became a familiar face, and voice, on tv and radio. He was articulate and blunt and put the interests and feelings of victims at the heart of the association's agenda, making him a natural and sought-after media performer.

He relished the influence his new post and media profile gave him on government law and order policy. It was during a speech to the Superintendents' Association conference that he floated the idea of a paedophile register, picked up by then Home Secretary Michael Howard and turned into law. He counts this as his proudest achievement.

Other causes championed by the association during his tenure which were translated into law included ending double jeopardy, which prevented someone being tried twice for the same crime, and 'three strikes and you're out' for persistent criminals. He also became close to the New Labour opposition, at a time when Tony Blair was promising to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'.

"What Tony Blair realised, hopefully with my help, was that law and order is a very important topic. When New Labour took over, you just have to look at Jack Straw's (the new Home Secretary) policy on a range of things, when I was an advisor, and it seems he listened.

"I was always political, in that I enjoyed the atmosphere of the Westminster village and I was fascinated by the whole process. When I was moving in circles like this, I was really born again. It was something I had really grown into and I found it quite natural.

"I had an ability to communicate with people at any level; being a policeman teaches you that. You lock the drunk up, but you also deal with fraud or a millionaire whose house has been broken into. I found it very easy to talk to these people to influence them," he says.

When he retired, in May 1998, he had planned to take some time out, but instead got a letter from the Prime Minister, inviting him to become a peer. He chose the title of Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Moor, where he lived at the time, and threw himself into this new career with gusto.

Although he largely confines his contributions to law and order, he is nevertheless assiduous, and proudly shows me a magazine clipping which shows how he was one of only six peers to have attended every one of the 174 days in the 2002/3 session.

Does this mean he's now a professional politician? "I hate to admit it, but I suppose I am," he says.

He turned down the chance of office when he rejected an invitation to become a liaison peer, the first step on the rung on the ministerial ladder. He says he feels better able to influence policy from the outside - "I have access to ministers still" - and a serious heart attack in 1995 has made him reluctant to take on the extra stress.

Wielding influence over ministers may be all very well, but he experienced the downside of having a high profile just over a year ago, when a call girl was photographed leaving his London flat in the early hours.

He says he met the girl when she was working in a House of Lords bar. He gave her a tour of Parliament, but that night she rang him in distress, wanting someone to talk to, and he obliged. The story of the law and order advisor and the call girl appeared in the News of the World, to be followed a week later by her account of what they got up to, including him wearing a police cap, and little else, and wielding a truncheon.

Lord Mackenzie's account is that he was the victim of a tabloid sting, and he offered the girl counselling and nothing else. But he is surprisingly philosophical about it, and says it comes with the territory of having a high profile. He even opens the book with an account of the alleged sting, perhaps to get it out of the way.

"I had used the media to raise the profile of the superintendents, so really I couldn't complain when I got hoist by my own petard. It would be so easy to keep your head down, but I put my head above the parapet, so I couldn't complain if somebody took a pot shot at me," he says.

He took advice on suing the newspaper from Lord Falconer, the present Lord Chancellor, but he was told it would be hugely expensive and would only ensure the story didn't go away, so he decided against.

He says while he is resilient, what annoyed him was the effect on his family, his wife Jean and sons Brian and Andrew. "It was a difficult period, domestically," he adds, probably understating the case.

But he rode the storm, and in some ways almost seems proud that he was considered important enough to be targeted.

While many people would feel bitter at being set up, Lord Mackenzie does not. "Angry isn't the right word. I feel sad that this sort of sleazy reporting sells newspapers, but it does, otherwise they wouldn't do it," is the closest he gets to expressing annoyance.

But, although lack of self-belief doesn't seem to be a problem, perhaps he's still too in thrall to his rise from the back streets of Darlington to the House of Lords, influencing ministers and dictating policy, to care much about call girls.

* Two Lives of Brian - From Policing to Politics by Brian, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (The Memoir Club) £17.99. Lord Mackenzie will be signing copies of the book at Ottakar's in Darlington on Saturday, May 29, from midday to 2pm.