With Lord Ashcroft notably absent in the days and weeks following the release of Call Me Dave, guests at the book’s official launch at Millbank Tower waited with anticipation for Ashcroft to make his grand entrance. However, when it came time for the speeches, it fell on the book’s publisher Iain Dale to break the news to guests that he was not coming, instead playing a video by way of explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHNkVEoS8C0
While guests — including Neil Hamilton and Owen Paterson — first took the Channel 5 Belize video to be a spoof, it soon became clear that Lord Ashcroft had been taken ill following the release of the biography, after suffering renal failure, liver and kidney failure, as well as septic shock. This left Ashcroft in intensive care for 18 days, though his condition has since improved.
In his absence, it fell on Dale to read out Ashcroft’s speech on his behalf, with Ashcroft saying he was sad not to have been able to join his co-author Isabel Oakeshott for media appearances in the aftermath of the piggate claims:
‘My poor health over the past month has meant that my co-author, Isabel Oakeshott, and my publisher, Iain Dale, have – with support from my private office – been left to defend the book on their own. Although they have done a sterling job without me, I am well aware that I should have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder at their side but – as my health deteriorated – that was, of course, impossible. I have fought many political and business battles over the past half century but this is the first one – and, I trust, the last – in which I haven’t led from the front.’
He then went on to say that contrary to some press reports, he was not a malicious person:
‘But people who know me well will testify to the fact that while I am certainly mischievous, I am not malicious. And you don’t just have to take my word on it in relation to the book. Chris Mullin, the Labour politician and hardly my natural ally, wrote in his review of Call Me Dave in The Guardian: “Remarkably, and despite the nonsense about a pig’s head, this is a biography almost entirely free of malice.” Ah, yes, the infamous pig’s head anecdote.
More than enough has been said and written already on these handful of carefully-worded sentences based on information from a very respected source. All I want to add is that I shared in the decision to include the anecdote in the book and I take full responsibility for the judgement that we reached.’
Before moving on to a joke about ‘piggate’:
‘My final word on “piggate” is this – and it’s an apology. I read in The Independent, at the height of the furore, that management up and down the country were so worried by their workforce’s fascination with “piggate”, particularly on social media, that they fear productivity will be affected. All I can say if that if the UK’s GDP for the second half of this year really does dip significantly, then I am very sorry and I take full responsibility for it!’
Of course whether Cameron will accept Ashcroft’s apology is another matter entirely.
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