Memories of the 'contrarian' who left his wife, betrayed a close friend – and wrote more than most people have read
✒To come to the point, Christopher Hitchens could be a monster. He left his first wife while she was pregnant. He betrayed his close friend Sidney Blumenthal, who worked for the Clintons, by deposing, to a notary public no less, something that had been said at a private dinner – at the height of the Lewinsky business. One of Sidney's friends, coming to live in London, said: "The main problem with the British press is that Christopher Hitchens is insufficiently loathed."
He was, to put it courteously, a trifle devious with money. When the late Alan Watkins left the New Statesman he helped raise £98 for a leaving present, a fortune in those days. Alan had asked for a copy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and was surprised to be given the cheapest edition. Hitchens cheerfully admitted that he had put the rest in his Abbey National account. He liked to organise big lunches and dinners; a hilarious one in Washington was to decide the "Osrics", named after the fawning courtier in Hamlet, which went to the most obsequious political journalist in that town – a closely fought honour, as you might guess. Hitch's technique was to say, "look, you're all busy, why don't you go back to work and leave a blank cheque with me …" I actually fell for that twice.
He loved to attack anything that other people revered. Mother Theresa and Michael Foot enraged him, or so he claimed. He called himself a "contrarian", taking the opposite view to the received wisdom, but I sometimes felt he was more of a "turnip" – a victim of "terrified you're not in the papers" syndrome. He adored publicity – admiration or vilification, it didn't matter. Yet his rejection of Islamofascism and support for Dubya must have taken courage, when you are the darling of the American left, such as it is.
But he could write. Heavens, he could write. He could drink three times as much as anyone else at lunch (four large scotches, followed by a whole bottle of red was typical) then when mere mortals would be in urgent need of a nap, he could produce a dazzling comparison between PG Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, or a tremendous exegesis of Orwell's later works, or a ferocious assault on Churchill as a war leader. His book God Is Not Great is an astonishing example of sustained and persuasive rhetoric (I suspect his lack of faith was a great source of comfort in the final illness).
He wrote vastly more than most people read, and read more than anyone I've met. I can claim some tiny credit; in one of his later Vanity Fair columns, written under the death sentence, he generously said that I had told him to write as he spoke, and that had liberated his style.
I don't recall the incident, but it's what I said to anyone who asked, so I'm sure it's true. And of course his speech was as brilliant, and challenging, and funny, and provocative as his writing. I suspect he will be hugely missed, even by people who hated his guts, and that is quite a tribute.
✒There has been an interesting correspondence in our Notes & Queries about getting to sleep. I hesitate to join in, since what works for one person is useless for another, but recently I heard that it can help to take three very deep breaths through the nose, letting the air out through your mouth, very slowly. Apparently some actors use the same method to cope with stage fright. It has worked for me sometimes, so it might be worth a shot.
✒My wife had a significant birthday last weekend, so we went off for a perfect couple of days at Burgh Island, the art deco hotel just off the Devon coast. When the tide is low you walk or drive across the sands; when it's high you take their "sea tractor", like the top deck of a bus mounted over four huge tyres, on which it plunges into the waves.
You might have seen the hotel on TV; Agatha Christie was, like Noel Coward, a frequent guest and set Evil Under The Sun there, so it was fun reading the book and spotting each location. The hotel also owns the Pilchard Inn on the island, a 14th century pub which is art not remotely nouveau.
Another couple, her from Liverpool, him from Wales, were at the next table and I took my jacket off one of their chairs. "I expect you heard the wife's accent," he said cheerfully. "You were worried she'd be going through your wallet."
I said jokily I'd been in Liverpool recently, and knew that most residents were not thieves.
"Well," he said, "it was the European capital of culture. When they nick your tyres now, they prop your car up on the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
✒Jesse Jackson was in town, and I went to a lunch for him organised by Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who knows everybody. "There are six billion people on this earth," said the Rev Jackson, "and only one Keith Vaz," which made several guests look thoughtful.
I sat next to his wife, Jacqueline, who was delightful. I asked if she'd known Michael Jackson, no relation, and she had. He had come to their house and signed a Stetson hat, to be auctioned for one of the charities she supports. Then she lost it. Finally, after his death, her daughter had found it – luckily, because she reckons it's worth around $20,000 now.
Simon Hoggart's book of parliamentary sketches, Send Up The Clowns, is available from the Guardian bookshop at the reduced price of £5.99 including UK p&p. Phone 0330 333 6846, or visit guardian.co.uk/bookshop. Simon will sign personal dedications on sticky labels if you send an sae to him at the Guardian; and will do so past Christmas too.