There were present, among others, mran Khan (who, was interested to observe, drank a glass or two of white wine) and Lord Hanson, whose companies Ms Glenda Jackson used to extol in advertisements on television.n the 1990s Lord Archer took over Lord McAlpine's late-night soirees at the Conservative conference. This is to pretend that Lord Archer never existed or, if he did, that he had nothing to do with them. "Archer? Believe there was a fellow of that name hangin' round the party once. Never knew him, 'm afraid." last saw him on 11 October - my diary is perhaps more reliable than his - at the party for Lord Lamont's memoirs As the Tatler of old used to put it, we enjoyed a joke We then went our separate ways. But the recent rule requiring journalists to confess their consumption of Krug champagne and shepherd's pie (excellent in themselves but affected as a combination) seems to me sensible in the circumstances. At any rate it is preferable to the convention adopted by the entire Conservative party, downwards from Mr William Hague, upwards to Lady Thatcher and sideways to Mr John Major. Sometimes, indeed, this clearing of the throat takes up the entire available space promise this will not happen here.

Finally she is shown to be the first among contemptible equals.. I t has become conventional in the past week for people writing about Lord Archer to begin their articles with a confession or declaration of interest about the peer in question. His rise and fall provides the allure of visceral excitement. If power is an aphrodisiac, so, presumably, is a megalomaniac's humiliation. e may not see in this bad boy a potent seething Mr Rochester, but when this self-defined "dispassionate" woman stands by her humbled husband, she is by no means abject. She is awesome.hatever the personal frisson of this fatal attraction to abasement, the party is over - no one believes that these people, in their shame and decadence, have any personal or political currency worth exchanging.Lord Snowdon snapped it mischievously in his portrait of the Archers, showing an Elizabethan Mary finally radiant as she holds her husband's daft disembodied head under her arm.

The party has depended on its collective wife for fund-raising and electioneering, but - with one exception - it never offered women power: only proximity to it.Mary Archer has put herself and her skills at her husband's service She basks in his risks. As Lady Archer, the spousal perks of the peerage were modest. As the wife of the Mayor of London she would have acquired a real place - albeit by proxy - in London politics as a first lady.'Tis ever thus in the Tory firmament. This was the kind of woman the men of the Establishment could do business with. She became a director of Anglia Television and in 1987 was elected to the hitherto masculine bastion, Lloyd's Council, after a formidable publicity campaign on her behalf.Mary Archer loyally defended her husband again when he was investigated for alleged insider-trading in 1994 (by now illegal) when he began dealing in Anglia Television shares while she was a director, despite a rule adopted by the Anglia board in 1992 that no relatives or associates should deal in Anglia equity between the end of the year and the publication of the annual results in March.If some political commentators regarded his mayoral crusade as vulnerable to a sleaze bomb still waiting to explode, Mary Archer remained one of his most ardent advocates. Their son illiam was heard to say: "Daddy lives at home but Mummy lives in an aeroplane."After the libel trial she instantly acquired a public persona that was swiftly rewarded by public positions. Her husband sponsored her powerful profile at Lloyd's.Michael Crick in his forensic biography of Archer comments that, even before their sons were dispatched to Rugby and Eton, Jeffrey and Mary were rather absent parents - he was based in London and, although she lived with them in Cambridge, her research into solar energy took her away on the international conference circuit.