The Whistleblower
By Robert Peston
Zaffre £14.99
Reviewed by Martin Bright
Gil Peck, the Political Editor of the Financial Chronicle, is on to the biggest story of his life. It is 1997, and a General Election is set to sweep a Labour government into power, led by its dynamic, modernising leader, Johnny Todd.
Gil, equal parts geek and gonzo, has been alerted to secret Tory moves to scrap a planned tax-raid on pension funds. It turns out that the scheme had been dreamt up by Gil’s sister, Clare, a high-flying civil servant in the Treasury, in the weeks before she was found dead after a hit-and-run accident.
A grief-stricken Gil is convinced his sister’s death is suspicious: Why was his ultra-cautious sister not wearing a cycle-helmet? Why did she have a meeting with the Labour leader just before her death? And what is the involvement of Jimmy Breitner, the FC’s billionaire proprietor?
This preposterous but hugely enjoyable romp by ITV’s Political Editor Robert Peston gallops through the last great days of newspaper excess before the internet destroyed the business model and the phone-hacking scandal exposed some of the more questionable tools of the trade.
Peck is an absurd grotesque, a self-hating version of Peston himself. “My life is a study in conflicts of interest, of boundaries crossed, of decency trampled”, he says at a low point.
Political junkies will enjoy the portraits of familiar figures. Gordon Brown becomes Neville Tudor, “a whale with a mop of black hair and the baritone of a Welsh male-voice chorister” and his Welshness rather suits him. Cameron Fiske is Johnny Todd’s Alastair Campbell, while John Major is recreated as the ineffectual Sir Peter Ramsey.
For the most part, the characterisations in The Whistleblower are light-hearted and even respectful, but you have to wonder what Ken Clarke did to the younger Peston. As Keith Kendall, the corpulent Tory Chancellor is transformed into a deceitful sexual predator, a long way from the hush-puppie-wearing jazz buff we have come to know.
Gilbert Peck is at times such a lacerating self-caricature, that I began to worry for the author’s well-being. The book is dedicated to his real-life sister, Judith, who herself had a terrible bicycle accident, although she thankfully survived.
But Peston did lose his wife, Sian Busby, who died of cancer in 2012 and he writes as someone who has first-hand experience of the kind of grief that comes from seeing someone die tragically young.
His book, The Whistleblower, is a genuinely entertaining political thriller, but it sometimes feels uncomfortable that Robert Peston has chosen to draw so graphically on his own life for his first novel.
Martin Bright is a former JC Political Editor
