Thursday, March 16, 2006

Ming' Memoirs: The Plot Thickens

I wrote about Ming Campbell publishing his memoirs in September a few days ago. It seems he had hired a lobby hack to ghost them, but has now decided he needs a different approach and dispensed with their services. Instead, someone who has what is described to me as a more "flowery" approach has been taken on. What can it all mean?

Coming tomorrow: The winner of the Name the Ming Campbell Memoirs Competition

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Surely it has to be

'The Minging Memoirs'

Paul Linford said...

Come on Iain, name names and stop teasing!

Anonymous said...

The lobby hack in question was a card carrying Lib Dem too...I won't name him or her though he or she made no secret of it.

Anonymous said...

As he claims to have been a world class runner, surely "From the fast lane to the slow lane"

Paul Linford said...

I seem to recall something similar happened with William Hague. He hired a respected lobby hack to write his "official" biography (I won't name him/her either) then changed his mind and went for a fluffy piece of hagiography penned by the lightweight Tory it-girl Jo-Anne Nadler.

As Iain will no doubt know, I'm sure publishers also have some say in such decisions.

Iain Dale said...

Paul, you've got that wrong. Hague had been cooperating with a female journalist from the Yorkshire Post but she never actually got around to writing anything and couldn't get a publisher. I talked to her but she decided not to proceed. it was then that he cooperated with Nadler. I should know - I published the book!

Paul Linford said...

Thanks for the clarification Iain!

I suppose the obvious follow-up question to you as a book publisher is: why was Nadler's book deemed more publishable than the one being planned by the ex-YP journo? And might a similar thing have happened with the Ming memoir?

I will understand if you think you are bound by commercial confidentiality here though....

Iain Dale said...

Paul, that wasn't the case. The YP journalist decide not proceed partly because, as I recall, no publisher could meet her financial expectations. It was nothing to do with one book being more publishable than the other. I would have happily gone ahead with her book.