Diary – 6 December 2003

Addis Ababa

The last time I was here was to cover the story of the mid-Eighties famine for the Mirror. The story was complicated by the fact that we had Robert ‘Mercy Mission’ Maxwell for company. I was summoned to the presence for a briefing by Captain Bob. ‘First, we are going to save the starving. Second, we must do it in a low-profile way. And third, I want you to organise the TV coverage.’ Once there, a photographer and I had to exhort him not to come with us to the famine-relief stations. The picture of big fat Bob with little dying babies was the kind of bad visual the non-Mirror media would have loved. We persuaded him to stay and annoy politicians in Addis instead. A few days later, we arrived back to a note from the Captain: ‘My work here is done. I must fly back to London to resolve the miners’ strike.’

Whatever the downsides, there are upsides to the infamy of being a controversial political and hate figure for some of the sadder elements of our media. Why else would I, a very average runner, be invited to take part in the Great Ethiopian Run, Africa’s biggest mass-participation sports event, and to spend several days rubbing shoulders with Ethiopia’s Haile Gebreselassie and Kenya’s Paul Tergat, who between them have set 20 world records? It has cost me next to nothing because, unlike when I was Tony Blair’s communications director, I can accept the organisers’ offer of a British Airways flight and a sponsored bed in the Hilton. What’s more, I can put on my Leukaemia Research Fund running gear with the logo ‘Sponsor me, text LRF to 87140’, get myself filmed and so raise money for and the profile of a cause dear to my heart. Go on, Boris, get texting.