Meyer culpa

SIR Christopher Meyer strides into the billiard room at the Jesmond Dene House Hotel, near Newcastle, saying rather loudly "Lindsay Jennings?" and heading towards two women having coffee.

"Over here," I beckon. "Ahhhhh," he says, hand thrust out in welcome. Refreshingly, there's no PA or press officer in sight.

Sir Christopher, 61, is in relaxed mood, up in the North-East to promote the Press Complaints Commission, of which he's chairman. He's dressed in a light blue shirt, open at the neck, no tie, and grey trousers which give way to a flash of red as he heads off to find a quiet room for our interview. The flash of red turns out to be his luminous socks, but more of those later.

Sir Christopher is chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), Britain's self-regulatory newspaper watchdog. But for the past few days it is not his willingness to promote the commission as a service for everyone, "not just celebrities," which has made the news.

Sir Christopher has been at the centre of a row over the publication of his memoirs, DC Confidential, penned from his days as British ambassador to Washington from 1997 to 2003. His credibility as the chairman of the PCC has been brought into question after he sold the serial rights to the book to two national newspapers, and has ignited a debate over whether civil servants should be writing memoirs.

His list of detractors is long, but among them is Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has called for his resignation, and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, whom he describes as a political "pygmy" in his book, and who, in turn, has recently ridiculed the former diplomat in a letter as a "red socked fop" who publishes "tittle-tattle." Mr Prescott is not happy about Sir Christopher's "impartiality" either, considering that he's head of an organisation designed to prevent intrusion into people's lives.

Sir Christopher has yet to reply to Mr Prescott's letter, but says he is planning to, and the letter will be posted on the PCC's website. "What I will not be doing is leaking it in advance to the Press," he says with a charming smile. "But what I can say is that if anybody comes to the PCC to complain about me or my book or something written in the newspapers that has to do with the book, then we have a very well established procedure at the commission which is, if there's a conflict of interest, the commissioner will stand back from the case."

Sir Christopher says it was his family who urged him to write the book. He'd started telling one of his Washington stories at the dinner table one evening, the third time his sons had heard it, he laughs, and they encouraged him to scribble it down.

He locked himself in a flat in the French Alps with his exercise book and bag of ballpoints and started to write. When he'd finished, he sent it off to his publishers who, in turn, gave it to the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office for approval.

"It came back with a message from the Cabinet Office saying they had no comment to make from it and they didn't ask me to take anything out. So the reaction afterwards is slightly odd," he says, adding that he doesn't want to "descend into a dogfight" with Mr Straw and Mr Prescott.

"All I've tried to do is describe to ordinary people what the heck an ambassador does. My wife, Catherine, reckoned that by the time we left Washington 60,000 people had come through the embassy. This is what I'm trying to convey to people and you can't do that without giving some glimpses into it."

But this is a book which contains more than "glimpses." Sir Christopher is the first insider to publish a first hand account of events leading up to the war in Iraq. He introduced a hesitant Blair to the new US President George Bush (the chemistry between the two was excellent from the word go, he says). He was at the centre of meetings and phone calls in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and beyond. He was uniquely placed to offer an insight into events, such as the case for war and Bush and Blair's handling of it.

For all he praises Tony Blair's strengths as a leader in his book, it is his comments about Blair's lack of attention to detail which have grabbed the headlines.

"I can compare him to two other Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and compared to those two, they always wanted to know more detail than their civil servants, which was pretty scary," he says. "But Tony Blair was really taken up by big ideas, which is why he was a very motivating leader."

Bush, on the other hand, was far sharper than many Europeans gave him credit for, he says. Sir Christopher first met him when he was Governor of Texas in February 1998.

'We had an hour with him and Catherine and I both took to him - he was quick and sharp and interested in a lot of things," he says. "He had a particular quality which is rare among politicians - he was absolutely open about what he wanted to know. He said to us, 'I don't know much about foreign affairs and it's something I need to learn'."

"We went back to Texas a year later and saw him and he said, 'I'm getting to grips with foreign policy. I've been surrounded by some good people'."

In the lead up to the Iraq war, Sir Christopher supported the campaign to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But he concedes it is a "tough, tough" decision on whether to pull the troops out now.

He points to a conversation he had with former US Secretary of State Colin Powell regarding the 19 American soldiers who died in the Black Hawk Down conflict in Somalia in 1993.

"He said, 'the problem about that was that the message we sent was that they died for nothing' and that has really stayed with me. I think to myself that almost 2,000 American and up to 100 British soldiers have died (in the Iraq war) and I do think you have to be able to say to those families that their deaths were not in vain," he says. "But I think I'm slightly affected by my own father who died. One of the things which consoles me is the knowledge that his death was not in vain."

He goes on to reveal the fascinating story of his RAF pilot father and his navigator who were shot down over a Greek island during the Second World War.

"The villagers rushed out and found the bodies and when the German soldiers weren't looking they buried their bodies in a churchyard," he says. "My mother knew he was missing but didn't know for sure he was dead and after a few years... somebody wrote to her saying they'd found his grave and a priest wrote saying he had all their belongings. In due course all these things finally made their way back to London."

It's a story which would make good reading and perhaps a second book for someone?

"It's funny you should say that..." he smiles warmly before jumping in with: "People say am I going to write a PCC Confidential and I'm absolutely not! Even if I wanted to there's nothing there because all the PCC does is out in the public. But my father's story... if I could go to the island, find anybody who may still be alive from then. That could be my next book."

For now, he is on his way to an evening being quizzed by the public while promoting the existence of the PCC. But will he still be chairman of the PCC in six months time?

"Oh yes! Absolutely," he says, emphasising that he is not profiteering from any of the serialisation rights for his book, which are going to three children's charities. He regrets nothing he has written, he says, leaning back in the sofa to reveal those bright red socks again.

"The Deputy Prime Minister did appear to be extremely concerned about my red socks," he muses.

He reveals that he's worn th at colour since the mid-80s when he was press secretary to Sir Geoffrey Howe, who told him it was extremely important to have a distinguishing characteristic. He even got three pairs through the post once, from an old American soldier who told him he'd had permission to wear them in combat during the Second World War.

"He attributed his survival to his lucky red socks," he says.

And are they lucky for him?

"They always have been, yes," he smiles.