Tom Bower

Thursday

25 Sep 2014
Tom Bower

Tom Bower’s Diary: Resuming hostilities with Richard Branson

This week marks another milestone in my 15-year battle with Richard Branson. Ever since he unsuccessfully sued me in 1999 to prevent the publication of my first damning biography, we have exchanged shots. His anointment on Sunday as Britain’s most admired businessman coincides with my appearances to promote Branson: Behind the Mask, my second book. Inevitably, the book sparked his fury, summarised in a 29-page letter of complaint. Our war is now focused on whether Virgin Galactic, his Heath Robinson rocket, will ever carry him 62 miles into the border of space. For ten years his regular predictions of imminent take-off have proven wrong. Last Christmas he announced he would fly this month with his son and daughter.

Tom Bower’s Diary: Resuming hostilities with Richard Branson

Thursday

15 Nov 2012
Tom Bower

Diary - 15 November 2012

I have just returned from sunny Los Angeles, visiting Simon Cowell, the subject of my most recent biography. He told me about a visit by Cheryl Cole to his amazing house in Beverly Hills to patch up their arguments. ‘My book is number 1,’ boasted Cheryl. ‘Mine was number 1 for six weeks,’ countered Cowell, enjoying a rare moment of self-congratulation amid a sharp drop of The X Factor USA’s ratings on Fox TV. Everyone, it seems, is having a crisis. I am grateful to John Birt for offering me my first job in TV (at Granada). But I blame his legacy for the current crisis, the latest in a long line since I joined BBC current affairs in 1970. Under Birt’s ‘blue skies thinking’ between 1987 and 2000, the BBC wasted billions of pounds on consultants, structural changes, jargon-infested bureaucracy, an Amazonian gravy train of expenses and salaries, and a stupendous property spree.

Saturday

28 Apr 2012
Tom Bower

Dangerous liaisons | 28 April 2012

Ever since Andy Coulson was forced to resign as Downing Street’s media supremo, Westminster’s malcontents have gossiped about the prospect of Rupert Murdoch wreaking revenge for Cameron’s impulsive creation of an inquiry into press ethics. More recently, cynics whispered that the Sunday Times exposure of Peter Cruddas, the Conservative treasurer offering access to the Camerons in exchange for donations, was the gypsy’s warning of horrors to come. And now we have the revelations about the Murdochs’ secret negotiations with the government to take full control of BSkyB. The Murdochs’ appearance this week at the Leveson inquiry fatally threatens the Cameron project and probably destroys Tory hopes of recovering their reputation for competence and honesty.

Dangerous liaisons | 28 April 2012

Saturday

26 Jun 2010
Tom Bower

The real villain of BP

At Tony Hayward’s inquisition in Washington last week, the hapless BP chief executive resisted the temptation to condemn his predecessor, Lord Browne of Madingley, by name. Instead, pressed repeatedly to explain why BP had breached safety regulations on over 700 occasions, Hayward described 2006 as the corporation’s worst year. That was John Browne’s last full year as chief executive. He left the job humiliated, having been exposed for signing an untruthful court statement. Ever since, Browne has defended that dishonesty as a unique aberration. But as the American investigation of the Gulf catastrophe develops, the blame for the poisonous legacy inherited by Hayward will increasingly be heaped on Browne. The credibility of the British government’s proposed ‘cuts czar’ will be shredded.

The real villain of BP

Saturday

3 Oct 2009
Tom Bower

Diary - 3 October 2009

A week to enjoy the autumn sunshine by the sea. Gluttony is no longer fashionable but what better way to celebrate my birthday on Monday than to spend a few hours at the Royal Native Oyster restaurant in Whitstable? Sitting by the Kent beach, I confess to consuming 24 oysters, a crab, a lobster, two bottles of Pouilly Fumé, a plum crumble and Irish coffee. Thankfully my wife was more modest. All her entreaties for restraint were answered by my description of Samuel Pepys’s vastly superior daily consumption as described in Claire Tomalin’s wonderful biography. Inevitably, I later collapsed on the shingle rereading that day’s lead entry in the Times’s ‘Happy Birthday’ column. ‘I can’t believe you’re writing about my birthday and not Brigitte Bardot’s,’ I had told Russell Twisk the previous week at the Garrick.

Wednesday

3 Jun 2009
Tom Bower

A bracing walk through Vienna with Mr Opec

Tom Bower talks to Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, at Opec’s meeting and is struck by how this master manipulator escapes censure in the great oil blame gameSpeculators are back in favour, especially the fund managers bidding up the price of oil. Cursed last year for tipping the world into recession, the same traders are now praised by some for once again betting on rising prices. Last year’s sinners are now cast as the Good Samaritans.The conductor of that topsy-turvy world is Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister. Choosing his words carefully as he walked through the centre of Vienna towards last week’s Opec meeting, the 75-year-old geologist smiled enigmatically about the speculators: ‘I’m not concerned.

Wednesday

29 Oct 2008
Tom Bower

Brown has come full circle since 1988

Tom Bower, the Prime Minister’s biographer, says that Gordon’s reinvention as the socialist who can save capitalism is just the latest in a series of convenient masks he has donnedGordon Brown would probably prefer to forget his magic moment in the crowded House of Commons exactly 20 years ago, on 1 November 1988. In the midst of a withering attack against Nigel Lawson’s management of the faltering economy, the Labour front bencher pierced the Tory’s façade with deadly accuracy: ‘This is a boom based on credit.’ Labour MPs frenziedly cheered as Brown artfully mocked the forlorn-looking Chancellor for allowing consumption to spiral out of control and for offering consistently wrong forecasts. The Chancellor’s boast about his ‘sound management of the economy,’ scoffed Brown, was worthless.

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