Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 17:55 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Tuesday 27 Aug ust 2019
8
Barbara Bach ,
actor and charity
activist, 72;
Gerhard Berger ,
racing driver, 60 ;
Martin Browning ,
professor of
economics,
Oxford University,
73; Mangosuthu
Buthelezi ,
politician, 91;
Peter Ebdon ,
snooker player,
49 ; Sian Edwards ,
musical director,
60; Tom Ford ,
fashion designer
and fi lm director,
58; Lady Antonia
Fraser , biographer
and historian, 87;
Mike Golding ,
yachtsman,
59; The Right
Rev Christine
Hardman , bishop
of Newcastle,
68 ; Sir Michael
Holroyd ,
biographer, 84;
Ashley Jackson ,
hockey player, 32 ;
Bernhard Langer ,
golfer, 62; Denise
Lewis , Olympic
heptathlete,
47 ; John Lloyd ,
tennis player and
commentator,
65; Glen Matlock ,
musician, 63;
Ann Murray ,
mezzo-soprano,
70 ; Sir Hugh Orde ,
former president,
Association of
Chief Police
Offi cers (Acpo),
61 ; Reece
Shearsmith , actor
and writer, 50;
Joan Smith , writer
and critic, 66 ;
Edmund Weiner ,
lexicographer, 69 ;
Tuesday Weld,
actor, 76; Jeanette
Winterson ,
writer, 60;
Michael Wolff ,
writer, 66.T
im Bell, Lord Bell,
the advertising and
public relations
executive, who
has died aged 77,
was the man who
claimed to have
come up with the
slogan “Labour Isn’t Working” that
helped Margaret Thatcher win the
1979 election. He went on to be one
of her closest advisers for the rest of
her life and announced her death in
April 2013. “I loved her,” he admitted
in his ghost written memoirs Right
or Wrong, published the following
year. “I am a hero-worshipper. I
work for my demi-gods.”
In her memoirs, Thatcher claim-
ed that Bell had better political
antennae than most politicians: “He
could pick up quicker than anyone
else a change in the national mood. ”
Bell it was who, along with
Gordon Reece , advised Thatcher on
interview technique, what clothes
to wear and even her hairstyle, and
spent Christmases at Chequers
when she was prime minister. “She
changed my life completely. She
used to think I was in touch with
ordinary folk. God knows why.”
Indeed. For while Bell was the
sort of man who appealed to her
as a courtier, with the looks of a
1950s leading man, he really had
little congruence with ordinary
people, despite having been
born in suburban north London
and educated at a state grammar
school. Hard drinking, heavy onLord Bell
Public relations executive
who became Margaret
Thatcher’s spin doctor
agencies before joining the brothers
Charles and Maurice Saatchi , who in
1970 were starting up their own.
It was a hard-driving upstart in
the industry, hustling for business.
Bell fi tted right in. Known to some,
though not to Maurice or Charles,
as the third brother, he became
unoffi cial managing director,
building contacts with national
newspaper editors and smoothing
over internal rows. In 1979, when the
Saatchis won the Tory account for the
forthcoming election, it was Bell who
was deputed to liaise with Thatcher.
Although James Callaghan ’s
government was faltering, the
agency’s aggressive campaign
probably helped to tip the balance,
especially with the poster campaign
showing a long line of unemployed
claimants – really Conservative party
volunteers. Bell claimed credit for it,
though others at Saatchi and Saatchi
devised the poster. He remained as
an unoffi cial adviser throughout
Thatcher’s term in offi ce, often
calling in for late-night drinks.
A motto that appealed to Bell
was: “Why tell the truth when a lie
will do?” He said in his memoirs: “I
am a moral man (but) there were
many times when I would adopt the
same philosophy.” He added that
he “retrofi tted” facts: “We could in
those days fi nd statistics that proved
anything ... you could argue we were
always trying to stretch the truth, but
then everybody was at the time.”
Bell left the Saatchis in 1985 to
co-found his own PR agency, Lowe
Howard-Spink and Bell, which
became Bell Pottinger three years
later and was subsumed in 1994 into
Chime Communications , of which he
became chair. Bell Pottinger became
well-known for its willingness to
represent rightwing fi gures. Among
its clients were the Pinochet regime,
Alexander Lukashenko , the president
of Belarus, and Asma al-Assad , the
wife of the Syrian dictator.
Domestically it represented
the Tory minister David Mellor
during his extramarital aff air, the
businessman Ernest Saunders,the expenses, an 80-a-day smoker,
living in Belgravia, his was a life of
backstage whispers. “The only talent
I have is charm,” he admitted in 2014.
His career ended in ignominy
when Bell Pottinger, the company
he had founded and run for 28 years,
was closed down in 2017 , having
been found to have breached ethical
principles after an inquiry into its
business dealings in South Africa.
Bell was born in Southgate,
the son of Arthur Bell, a salesman
from Belfast, who abandoned his
Australian-born wife Greta (nee
Findlay) and emigrated to South
Africa when his son was fi ve.
She subsequently married Peter
Pettit, a solicitor, who became the
Conservative mayor of Marylebone
in 1961. Bell was educated at Queen
Elizabeth grammar school, Barnet,
but left at 17 to become a messenger
in the postroom at ABC Television.
He had thought of becoming a
teacher, but subsequently claimed
in the Daily Telegraph in 2015 that he
had decided against the profession
because of its “lazy, whingeing,
Guardian-obsessed staff rooms”.
Instead, he worked his way
through a series of jobs in advertisingBell at the Chime
offi ces in London
in 2008. Below,
with Thatcher in2002. He advised
her on interview
technique, what
clothes to wear
and even her
hairstyle, and
spent many
Christmases at
Chequers when
she was prime
minister
DAVID SANDISON/THE
INDEPENDENT/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAN
DAVIDSON
convicted of manipulating Guinness
shares during a takeover battle,
Moham ed Al Fayed, the owner of
Harrods, and Neil Hamilton in his
battle with the Guardian over the
cash for questions scandal.
“Contrary to the illusion people
have, I would not represent Saddam
Hussein or Hitler,” Bell told the
Telegraph in 2015. “I have represented
people who are thought to be evil, but
I only represent them because they
promised me they were going to stop
being evil and when they carried on
being evil, I walked away.”
In 2012, Bell and his associate
James Henderson bought out
Chime’s controlling interest, though
the company retained a 25% share.
However, the pair soon fell out over
strategy and Bell left in August 2016.
Within a year Bell Pottinger became
embroiled in a crisis involving its
South African subsidiary which
was shown to have run a campaign
for the Indian Gupta brothers, who
had controversial business ties to
the country’s government. The
campaign, with its racist attack on
“white monopoly capital” opponents ,
outraged other agency clients
including the businessman Johann
Rupert, who complained.
Bell’s excuse that he had actually
opposed the deal rang hollow,
particularly when he appeared on
Newsnight to defend himself against
the constant sound of his mobile
phone going off – an elementary
gaff e for a supposed PR guru. The
company folded within days.
He suff ered from ill health and had
a triple heart bypass operation in 2001.
He was knighted by Thatcher in 1991
after she left offi ce and was ennobled
by Tony Blair in 1998. “ I have led a
charmed life ,” he told the Mail on
Sunday in 2017. “I want to be the sort
of person who walks into a restaurant
and people say, isn’t that so-and-so?
It’s insecurity, not vanity.”
Bell was married three times, once
briefl y in his 20s, then subsequently
in 1988 to Virginia Hornbrook,
with whom he had two children,
Daisy and Harry. That marriage was
dissolved in 2016 and the following
year he married Jacky Phillips.
She and his children survive him.
Stephen BatesTimothy John Leigh Bell, Lord Bell ,
public relations consultant and media
strategy adviser, born 18 October
1941; died 25 August 2019Birthdays
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@guardianobitsShe used
to think
I was in
touch with
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