Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 27, 2019 Page 29ho made Maggie
a job as a messenger boy for aBC
television. as the Sixties pro-
gressed, he moved into advertising,
and in 1970 joined a fledgling adver-
tising firm run by two brothers,
Maurice and Charles Saatchi.
It was a heady time, marked by
seat-of-the-pants campaigns and
office histrionics.
recounting that period in the
Mail, Bell wrote: ‘I suspect that
Charles had always bashed Mau-
rice up, since their childhood. He
used to say to him: “I can’t believe
you came from the same womb as
me.” Saatchi & Saatchi was brutal-
ity from start to finish.
‘It began with aggression, had
aggression in the middle and had
aggression at the end. Maurice had
this saying that for us to win, oth-
ers had to fail, and he was right.’
there was an emperor’s new
clothes aspect to this industry.
When S&S won one contract,
Charles dusted off a stock picture
of a romantic French couple, glued
on the words ‘Pour un homme et
une femme’ and sent off the invoice.
It won an industry award.
times were good for the young
Bell — he was so flush he even
bought a girlfriend a Porsche.
‘truth be known, in those early
days, none of us really knew how to
run the agency,’ said Bell. ‘Half the
time, people in the company just
made up their own titles, so I made
myself managing director. the
Press started calling me “the third
brother”. you can imagine how well
that went down.’
the big time came in the shape of
the tory Party, anxious to shake off
the failure of the Heath years and
capitalise on labour’s woes.
Success in 1979 bought Bell
access to the inner sanctum of thethatcher administration. as his
ties to his beloved leader strength-
ened, so those with the Saatchis
loosened — before severing over a
battle for the tory election ad
account in the mid-1980s.
Bell’s version has it that Mrs
thatcher recruited one of her
favourite industrialists, lord Han-
son, to warn the brothers off after
they threatened to scupper his new
Pr company, lowe Howard-Spink
& Bell (bought out in 1989 by Bell
and Pottinger and relaunched nine
years later as Bell Pottinger).
Bell repaid her loyalty by nursing
her through the stresses and
strains of office.C
HrIStMaS with the
thatchers at Chequers
was always an ordeal. Fun
was confined to drink and
watching Morecambe and Wise.
the ‘fantastic’ Denis thatcher
would keep everyone’s glasses
topped up while his son Mark
whinged about his treatment by
the newspapers.
Daughter Carol, meanwhile, spent
the day ‘trying to avoid having a
row with her mother’.
looking after Mark and Carol’s
media profile was unpaid work,
Bell’s thank you for the Prime Min-
ister’s patronage. there would be
other trying causes.
When invited to dinner with Prin-
cess Diana in 1993, Bell found him-
self decidedly underwhelmed by
the experience.
‘My friend Gordon reece was
completely infatuated with
her... but I never had much time
for Diana myself,’ Bell said.
‘the problem was that she fan-cied the privileges of being the
Princess of Wales, but not the sac-
rifices and responsibilities.
‘and when it became apparent
she couldn’t be a Disney princess
all the time, she behaved like a
sulking brat, doing that weepy
Panorama interview and destabilis-
ing various foolish married men...
‘She was very tall — with very
long legs — and very vain. I thought
she looked like a horse. I couldn’t
make myself interested in her banal
air-headedness.’
His cynicism about people in high
places was already well-nourished
— not least by the scene he wit-
nessed on the day Margaret
thatcher surrendered the premier-
ship to John Major after being
overthrown by her own Cabinet.
‘almost immediately after her
third election victory, in 1987, the
government was floundering, and
Margaret was behaving in a differ-
ent way from that which had seen
her so successful in previous terms’’
he said. She was more autocratic
and more opinionated, the hubris
increased, and her judgment was
slipping — all of which meant more
enemies and a lot more trouble.’
In 1990, the chickens came home
to roost. ‘I saw how power shifts. I
saw it physically cross a room,’ he
said. ‘We were all gathered around
Margaret, with most of the Cabinet
and some MPs. Major hadn’t yet
arrived. everyone was chattering
away, telling her what a good job
she’d done, and how it had been
the greatest leadership ever.
‘then, suddenly, Major walked in.
and like a huge swarm of bees, the
entire group moved, as one, in a
single instantaneous surge, across
the floor to surround him. In a sec-
ond, it had left only Gordon reeceand me standing in the middle of a
newly vacated large space talking
to Margaret.’
Bell, who remained devoted to
thatcher, would feel this kind of
hurt as the world turned. Granted
a peerage by tony Blair, he found
himself ignored by David Cameron.
Bell’s ‘naughty’ buccaneering style
of Pr had been supplanted by a
bland, corporate version.
as his health deteriorated — he
underwent a triple-heart-bypass
and suffered a stroke among other
trials — his company, Bell Pot-
tinger, found itself where no Pr
company wants to be — the story.
In 2017 its subsidiary in South
africa had got into bed with the
Gupta brothers, Indian-born
associates of President Zuma. Its
racist campaign against so-called
‘white monopoly capital’ led to it
being expelled from the uK Pr
industry body.
Bell, by then a minority share-
holder, joined in the media attackson the company bearing his name,
leading to its dissolution.
His private life was happier. On
his 76th birthday lord Bell married
Jacky Phillips, 23 years his junior.
She was his third wife — the sec-
ond marriage having ended when
Virginia, mother of their children
Harry and Daisy, was linked roman-
tically to a gardener.
as Parkinson’s Disease added to
his trials, Bell remained a lover of
life, enjoying gossipy dinners about
politics — his lasting obsession.
Disdainful of theresa May, he was
a convinced Brexiteer and believed
Boris Johnson was the only major
tory figure capable of delivering it.
Many would argue the Conserva-
tives could have done with Bell —
the great political spinmeister —
during the imbroglio over europe.
you can see the poster now: a line
of suited eurocrats queuing for a
long Continental lunch. the ver-
dict: ‘europe Isn’t Working’.d me standing in the middle of a on the company bearing his nameAdvertising guru:
Tim Bell in his heyday
and right with Mrs
Thatcher. Below,
his famous 1978
ad campaign