Matthew Parris

For the medieval chronicler and artist, see Matthew Paris.

Matthew Parris (born August 7 1949 in Johannesburg) is a journalist and former Conservative politician in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Parris is the eldest of six children and grew up in several countries where his British father was working as an electrical engineer (South Africa, Cyprus, Rhodesia, Swaziland and Jamaica). His mother was an actress. At the age of 19 he drove across Africa to Europe in a Morris Oxford; the trip was traumatically punctuated when he and the girl he was travelling with were attacked and he was forced to witness her rape. After obtaining a first class degree in law from Clare College, Cambridge, he studied international relations at Yale University. He was offered a job as a spy, but worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for two years. In 1976 he left this secure career because he did not like its formality, and because he wanted to become a Member of Parliament. He first applied to become an apprentice London Transport bus fitter, but was rejected, so he joined the Conservative Research Department. He moved on to become correspondence secretary to Margaret Thatcher. He was awarded an RSPCA medal (presented by the prime minister) for jumping into the Thames and rescuing a dog.

Parliamentary career

He served as the Conservative MP for the rural parliamentary constituency of West Derbyshire from 1979 until 1986. Competing prospective candidates for the seat included Peter Lilley and Michael Howard, later Conservative leader. The start of his career was overshadowed by a letter which he had written to a council tenant on behalf of Margaret Thatcher, which became featured in Labour Party election publications. As an MP he voiced his support for gay rights. Parris eventually left politics to pursue a career in journalism.

Radio and television work

Parris is now a radio and television presenter and pundit. As an MP he took part in a documentary requiring him to live for a week on state social security payments set by the Conservative government for which he was an MP. The experiment came to an embarrassing end when he ran out of money for the electricity meter.

Parris left Parliament specifically to take over from Brian Walden as host of ITV's influential Sunday lunchtime current-affairs series Weekend World in 1986. The series, broadcast since 1976 with Walden at its helm, ran for two more years under Parris before being cancelled in 1988. Parris was criticised for being "too nice", and being unable to ask the "killer" questions that had made Brian Walden such a popular host.

He presents BBC Radio 4's Great Lives biography series, and has appeared on the comedy news programme Have I Got News For You.

In 2007, Parris presented two damning documentaries for Radio 4 exposing politicians' use of cliché and jargon in "Not My Words, Mr. Speaker."

Writing and journalism

Parris is a prolific writer and has written many books on politics and travel. In 1991, a compilation of his pieces in The Times appeared, entitled So Far, So Good. Since then there have been further compilations. Scorn, a book he has edited of quotations about curses, jibes and general invective, was published in October 1994.

His success has been as a parliamentary reporter, due to his knowledge and understanding of politicians and ability to express this well. He is regarded as one of the leading critics of Tony Blair, and is thought of by many as one of the most powerful commentators on Fleet Street. He worked as parliamentary sketch writer for The Times newspaper from 1988 to 2001. His writing has largely concerned current events rather than a historical account of his own time in politics. He has weekly columns in The Times and The Spectator magazine.

In 2004 Parris became Writer of the Year in Granada Television's What the Papers Say Awards. In part, this was for reporting on elections in Iraq and Afghanistan. His previous accolades include Columnist of the Year in the 1991 and 1993 British Press Awards, and in the What the Papers Say Awards 1992. In 1990 he received the London Press Club's Edgar Wallace Outstanding Reporter of the Year Award.

Criticism of Tony Blair

Parris has suggested that Tony Blair has a deep flaw in his personality which makes him unsuitable for the role of Prime Minister. On March 18 2006 he wrote-

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he even believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention — himself — has been his only interesting role.

Travel writing

Parris has made several expeditions abroad, including to Mount Kilimanjaro in 1967 and 1989, Zaire in 1973, the Sahara in 1978, and Peru and Bolivia. In 1990 he published Inca-Kola, about his travels in Peru.

L'Avenc

He spent the Antarctic winter of 2000 on the French possession of Grande Terre (also known as Desolation Island, part of the Kerguelen Archipelago in the Indian Ocean) with a few dozen over-winterers, mostly researchers. One of them was fatally shot in a tragic accident, an event about which he writes movingly.

In 2005 Parris published A Castle in Spain about his family's project to refurbish a derelict 16th century mansion, L'Avenc, in Catalunya, close to the foothills of the Pyrenees, and make his home there.

2007 cyclists controversy

In his Times article of 27 December 2007, Parris took a strong line against cyclists, beginning his column with "A festive custom we could do worse than foster would be stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists", going on to denounce cyclists on a number of grounds, particularly their alleged propensity for littering. This came as a shock to many cyclists, including some who had previously been caught by similar wires. Responses in the paper have included letters and a column in reply mentioning, among other things, that litter is often found along all-motor vehicle routes. Comparisons have been made to other issues of incitement and hate speech, which have been a controversial issue in the UK in recent years. Parris, who is openly gay and therefore a member of another potentially targeted minority, opposed the idea of a gay-protecting law in another column.

On 3 January, Parris apologised, "It was meant humorously but so many cyclists have taken it seriously that I plainly misjudged. I am sorry."

Personal life

Parris announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. He has stated that he was once beaten up on Clapham Common, which he had habitually visited late at night. This left him with a quiet determination to fight for gay rights. In a live interview on Newsnight during the Ron Davies scandal of 1998, he famously told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that there were two gay members of the then current Labour Cabinet, one being Peter Mandelson. He has stated that there are between thirty and sixty unannounced gay members of the UK parliament. In July 2006, in a list compiled by the Independent on Sunday, Parris was voted the 73rd most influential gay man in the United Kingdom.

In August 2006, Parris entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Julian Glover, a political journalist (not to be confused with the actor of the same name). At the time of their partnership, they had been together for eleven years.

Parris is a keen marathon runner, taking part in the London event several times, with a fastest time of 2:32:57.

He owns homes in Spain, Derbyshire, and the Docklands of East London.

Bibliography

• A Castle in Spain (Viking, 2005) ISBN 0-670-91547-5
• Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in Politics (Viking, 2002) ISBN 0-670-89440-0
• The King's English (Oxford Language Classics Series) Henry Fowler, Frank Fowler, Matthew Parris (introduction) (Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0-19-860507-2
• Off Message: New Labour, New Sketches (Robson Books, 2001) ISBN 1-86105-479-3
• I Wish I Hadn't Said That: The Experts Speak - and Get It Wrong! Matthew Parris (foreword), Christopher Cerf, Victor Navasky (HarperCollins, 2000) ISBN 0-00-653149-0
• Against the Law: The Classic Account of a Homosexual in 1950s Britain Peter Wildeblood, Matthew Parris (introduction) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999) ISBN 0-297-64382-7
• The Great Unfrocked: Two Thousand Years of Church Scandal (Robson, 1998) ISBN 1-86105-129-8
• Scorn with Extra Bile Matthew Parris (editor) (Penguin Books, 1998) ISBN 0-14-027780-3
• I Couldn't Possibly Comment: More Sketches from the Commons (Robson Books, 1997) ISBN 1-86105-095-X
• Read My Lips: A Treasury of Things Politicians Wish They Hadn't Said (Parkwest Publications, 1997) ISBN 1-86105-043-7
• Great Parliamentary Scandals: Four Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innuendo (Robson Books, 1995) ISBN 0-86051-957-0
• Scorn with Added Vitriol (Hamish Hamilton, 1995) ISBN 0-241-13587-7
• Scorn: A Bucketful of Discourtesy, Disparagement, Invective, Ridicule, Impudence, Contumely, Derision, Hate, Affront, Disdain, Bile, Taunts, Curses and Jibes (Hamish Hamilton, 1994) ISBN 0-241-13384-X
• Look Behind You!: Sketches and Follies from the Commons (Robson, 1993) ISBN 0-86051-874-4
• So Far So Good...: Selected Pieces (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991) ISBN 0-297-81215-7
• Inca Kola: A Traveller's Tale of Peru (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0-297-81075-8
• Coping with the Soviet Union Peter Blaker, Julian Critchley, Matthew Parris (Conservative Political Centre Bookshop, 1977) ISBN 0-85070-599-1

External links

• Times Online - Matthew Parris column archives
• Times Online - The Matthew Parris Pol-Cast Podcast series commenting on the 2006 Party conference season
• Times Online - Matthew Parris: the Kerguelen columns articles from his trip to the Kerguelen Islands
• audio interview
• Matthew Parris from the Open Directory Project