'My vision of the big picture'

Nick Morrison reports on his first year in office.

MAYOR Mallon has a secret. He has been struggling with it for three years, but at last he has been forced to give in to nature. Even now, though, he has yet to pluck up the courage to do it in public, and keeps it within the confines of his office.

"I've been fighting wearing glasses for three years, but yesterday I went to get some, and now I can see this piece of paper," he says, holding up said paper. "But I will only wear them in here."

Here is the large and tastefully furnished office of the first directly-elected Mayor of Middlesbrough, a haven of simple modernity in the town's Victorian Gothic town hall. There's an enormous - and extraordinarily tidy - desk in one half, although we're in the large and comfortable armchairs in the other. Tom McGuinness pictures from the council's collection hang alongside a Fleetwood Mac poster - the Mayor's favourite, the council press officer confides.

The Mayor puts on his new glasses to show me. Like everything else in the room, including the Mayor himself, they're neat and smart, without being too flamboyant. Unfortunately, he only puts them on when the photographer has been and gone.

So was it vanity that kept him from the optician? "The reason I hadn't gone to get my eyes tested was that I didn't have the time," he says. "I have been really concentrating on going now for about eight weeks, and yesterday I got the time. I haven't got used to them, but at least I can see this piece of paper."

Those who work with him attest to his phenomenal work rate, so this is quite believable, although secretly I suspect vanity may have played a part as well. But then he tells me about the rigmarole of getting his hair cut. He will start planning about a week before he needs to go and will cancel two or three appointments before the deed is eventually done. He puts himself in the hands of students at Middlesbrough College, and will often have an official briefing him as he sits in the barber's chair.

A normal working day starts with a 35-minute training session at the gym, and not for the Mayor any chit-chat over the rowing machine - "I don't have time to talk, I train too hard," he says. He gets into the office between 9am and 9.30am, then his day is taken up with focussing on his four priorities: environment, regeneration, business and transport.

Today is slightly different. He's arrived late, after staying up for the local election count the night before. After our interview, he is speaking at a lunch in Great Ayton - although he won't have time to eat - then he's seeing the council chief executive at 2pm, Government officials at 3pm, more council officials at 4pm, then tonight he has an official function at 6.30pm, although he says he doesn't go to many meals.

It all seems a far cry from his days as the head of Middlesbrough CID, which ended in acrimony, accusation and counter-accusation, and the four-year investigation which went by the name of Operation Lancet and managed to produce virtually nothing of note. He's not bitter, saying he thinks about the present and future and not the past. Indeed, if it weren't for his suspension at the hands of former Chief Constable Barry Shaw, he wouldn't now be in charge of around 7,000 employees and a budget of £165m.

"Little did he know he was doing me a favour," he says of his former nemesis. "At the end of the day it is destiny. When you look at what happened from December 1, 1997, to the present, clearly there is somebody, somewhere who is orchestrating this big picture. I'm a Catholic, I believe in God. It has to be him."

Mayor Mallon has brought to bear the management techniques he used in the police on running a local authority, although the challenge is much broader. "There is more influence over more areas: before it was crime, now it is everything," he says.

When he talks about what he's done - including creating an 80-strong force of street wardens - and what he plans to do - putting Middlesbrough at the forefront of the development of hydrogen as an alternative fuel source - he is filled with such obvious enthusiasm, it's clear that he must be enjoying the direction his career has taken. Apparently not.

"I don't enjoy this job, it's too hard to enjoy. Every day is hard. It is not enjoyable, but sometimes it is satisfying," he says. Later, he returns to the same theme: "I find this job hard because I work hard. I could have a really easy time, I could just turn up and say 'where's the papers?' but I'm constantly engaging with people.

"But there is no job I would rather do than this. I do it because I think it is right and I owe the public. There is never a day goes by that I don't think how grateful I am to the public, because they stuck with me thick and thin through Lancet. I want this local authority to deliver to the public."

And the Mayor seems to be sure of what it will take to deliver. He has clearly devoted a lot of thought into coming up with his four priorities - a mantra of environment, regeneration, business and transport - and puts forward a good case for them.

But what comes across most strongly is not so much what he's doing as the way he's going about it. He radiates confidence, knows what he wants and is determined to achieve it.

"I know my strengths and weaknesses. I have got many weaknesses that I'm working on to get better, but I have got some strengths, and one of the strengths I have got is that I understand strategy and the big picture. I'm pretty confident, but I'm not arrogant," he says.

When pressed, he says one of his weaknesses is that he doesn't have as much of an eye for detail as he would like and he is a bit of a control freak. "I'm very critical of my own performance, and always looking to improve," he adds.

He might be beholden to the public for voting him in, but he has the confidence not to feel he has to respond to every whim of public opinion. "I went to a public meeting and someone said 'I want this and I want that', and I said I couldn't do that. He said 'But I voted for you', and I said 'You don't have to vote for me next time'."

He also believes in leading by example. He's done his bit for reducing congestion and pollution by swapping his chauffeur-driven Jaguar for a 60 miles-to-the-gallon Smart car. He claims a £50,000 salary but forgoes any of the allowances he would be entitled to claim. He has two mobile phones - one paid for by the council and one paid out of his own pocket. In the last 12 months, he has run up only 32 hours on the council one - he's worked it out at around 37 minutes a week.

"I won't abuse the position I have got, that is a real obsession with me. People say you must enjoy the trappings of power, but I don't enjoy them. I just want to be paid the going rate," he says. "One of the things I have always said is that I will never ever abuse the role. I'm probably the best man for the job, because I don't enjoy any trappings."

This is just one of the reasons why Mayor Mallon should have been exactly what Tony Blair had in mind when he promoted directly-elected mayors as a way of reinvigorating local government. Whatever doubts some people may have about what he's doing - and his street warden scheme, for one, has caused disquiet and prompted fears of eroding civil liberties - he has the drive, the commitment, and the charisma, to get things done. The irony is that his election victory, over the Labour candidate, among others, helped dampen the Prime Minister's enthusiasm for the idea.

Mayor Mallon hasn't yet decided whether to run again when his term of office expires in three years' time, although he's confident that he will know when his time is up.

"If I come to the conclusion I'm not doing a very good job, they won't have to get rid of me, I will just go. As soon as I'm ineffective, I will be gone," he says. "But I don't think I'm ineffective at the moment." He grins, before adding: "I don't lack confidence." No, he certainly doesn't.