A TRUE GHOST STORY

DJ. Taylor unmasks the spooky figures

who really write the nation's bestselling books

Q: WHAT connects the following books, all of them reposing somewhere near the top of the autumn bestseller lists? Michael Heseltine's Lord of the Jungle, Geri Halli- well's If Only, Sir Alex Ferguson's Manag- ing My Life, David Beckham: My World.

A: Each is the bruised yet marketable fruit of some kind of public life, whether lived out behind a dispatch box, a micro- phone or the gates of Old Trafford. And yet, to anyone involved in the world of books, there is a more obvious link. All these items, to a greater or lesser degree, were written by someone other than the name that appears on the title page.

To a literal-minded consumer there is probably something vaguely shocking in the idea that a first-person account of the life and times of some public figure — let alone a novel — may not, strictly speaking, be all, or even any, of his or her 'own work'. At the same time the `ghost-writer' responsible for this offence against the Trade Descriptions act belongs to an age-old and highly respectable literary tradi- tion. Never mind exactly how much of Shakespeare may or may not have a flavour of Bacon; the young Charles Dickens certainly `edited' the memoirs of the pre-Victorian clown Joseph Grimaldi. And Thackeray, if he did not actually write other people's books, certainly moved in the kind of low- level literary circles in which this work got done. One of the funniest scenes in his novel Pendennis (1850) takes place at a publisher's party where various hacks amuse themselves by congratulating the Hon. Percy Popjoy on the excellence of a non-existent scene in the three-volume novel to which this literary- minded young aristocrat has put his name.

A century and a half later, there are any number of Percy Popjoys proudly taking the credit for words they did not them- selves write. As someone with a fair knowl- edge of how the world of London publishing currently conducts itself, I should say that at least half of the 20 books included in this week's hardback bestseller list — say, seven of the non-fiction entrants and three of the novels — were produced with the help of collaborators. Some ghosts are not shy, and will happily be seen in day- light. One of the ways in which a once- murky world is changing is the willingness of everyone — publishers, 'authors' and the ghosts themselves — to own up.

At the same time there are other ghosts, busy buffing up the work of supposedly rep- utable writers, who lurk in darkness; whose names and activities are kept tightly under wraps by the publishers.

Perhaps one ought to start by defining terms. What is a ghost-writer? How do you become one? Is the money any good? And can you pursue this parasitic calling without serious damage to any professional reputa- tion that you may have? Leaving aside the first question for a moment, the remaining answers are: a) usually by hanging around the offices of publishers who bring out this sort of book; b) at the upper level, very good indeed — Anthony Howard is supposed to have cleared a decent six-figure sum for his work on Michael Heseltine's memoirs; c) it depends, largely, on how many people come to hear about it, and your own attitude to the work (the conventional response of a ghost-writer to his subject being one of slightly amused contempt). There have been some eminently respectable ghost-writers who have enjoyed owning up — the distin- guished novelist Francis King, for example, cheerfully admitted to having a hand in a whole series of late-period L.P. Hartley nov- els — but there have been others, equally eminent, any mention of whose exploits in the field would produce an immediate threat of legal action.

To go back to that first principle: 'ghost- writer' is an elastic term, taking in every- thing from the anonymous churning out of a celebrity autobiography from interview tapes to acknowledged collaborator status (the showbiz confessional that contains those immortal words 'with Les Sludge' on the spine) and the weeks of high-grade editorial work that even supposedly 'serious' writ- ers sometimes need before their works are ready for the printer. Certain 'celebrity nov- elists', it scarcely needs saying, barely set eyes on the volumes marketed in their name. Some years ago, to take a notorious case, the firm of Sinclair- Stevenson paid the supermodel Naomi Campbell some implau- sible sum for a novel. The writ- ing was entrusted to a Sinclair-Stevenson editor (her- self a practising novelist) named Caroline Upcher, on the understanding that time would be set aside for 'author' and ghost to discuss suitable plots, themes and treatments. As it turned out, the punishing schedules of the catwalk prevented very many meetings of this kind. In the end Ms Upcher confronted her senior partner backstage at a fashion show and presented her with a carrier-bag full of draft typescript. La Campbell, blanching at the sheer size of the document, is supposed to have waved the package away, given Ms Upcher her blessing and told her, in effect, to get on with it.

Then, of course, there are the bestselling popular novelists whose books are coaxed and goaded into print by armies of back- room staff. It says something for Lord Archer's reliance on one of his former edi- tors, Richard Cohen, that when our man changed publishers some years ago a clause had to be written into the contract specify- ing that Cohen should still be allowed to work on the manuscript. As an example of what he had to deal with, I once knew a publisher who got to see an early draft of a collection of Archer short stories. The first one opened with a paragraph that began 'It was 1946. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister'.

Critics, unfortunately, are quick to notice the more tangible signs of editorial interfer- ence — the sentences of such comparative splendour that, like some rare orchid, they seem out of place in the surrounding swamp. Several reviewers of Managing My Life, for instance, occupied themselves with tracking down stylistic flourishes that could only have come from the pen of Sir Alex Ferguson's ghost, the celebrated sports writ- er Hugh Mcllvanney.

Not that the ghosts necessarily crave recognition. 'All I ask for,' says Nicholas Davies, who has ghosted such specialist products as the autobiography of Darius Guppy, 'is one word. I just want my name to be added to the copyright at the front of the book. It's not my life. I'm just doing a job. It's their life and they should take the cred- it.' Davies looks back fondly on his time with the convicted gem fraudster, during which he mainly tried to moderate Guppy's desire to hurl abuse at the home secretary and oth- ers he believed to be part of his downfall. 'I take it as a great privilege,' says this happy ghost, 'to get so close to someone. You learn so much about people. That's the fascination of it.' That, I suppose, and the 50 per cent of all income after publication; not that this was a huge amount in the case of My Struggle BY Guppy, which was something of a microseller. But then there are plenty of other ghosts who do very well indeed, such as Luke Jennings, the official ghost of Chris Ryan, the SAS novelist.

All this takes place at the more populist — that is, more expensive — end of the lit- erary world, an environment peopled by titanic egotists whose characters, having begun paragraphs by sipping at their pint of beer, quite often end them by finishing their glass of wine, merely because their creator can't be bothered to read back over what he or she has written. However, dis- creet collaborations — usually between friends or husband-and-wife teams — are not unknown a good many rungs higher up the literary ladder.

As the volume of his selected letters demonstrates, Evelyn Waugh enjoyed lectur- ing his friend Nancy Mitford on how her novels ought to be written, occasionally to the extent even of offering ground-plans for particular scenes and chapters. Waugh's con- temporary Patrick Hamilton provided a simi- lar service for his wife, Laura Talbot; while Eric Jacobs's biography of Kingsley Amis notes the existence of Amisian touches (and vice versa) in some of the novels written by his second wife Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Move on into one or two of the more spe- cialised redoubts of non-fiction — notably the political memoir — and the presence of some nimble-fingered surrogate is the rule rather than the exception, welcomed by crit- ics on the grounds that, without such help, the book would be so frightful as to be beyond reading. Several people suggested that the Heseltine memoirs were pretty dull even with the assistance of Anthony Howard. Imagine what they would have been like if Tarzan had completed them himself! In much the same way, the former Tory chancellor lain Macleod used occasion- ally to complain about the reception doled out to his biography of Neville Chamberlain — a vicarious irritation, presumably, as most of the book was written by Macleod's acolyte and fellow Tory MP Nigel Fisher.

As the mention of these distinguished names — Dickens, Waugh, Amis, Hamilton — perhaps indicates, this is a respectable trade. One of the by-blows of the unseemly row that broke out last month when Barbara Windsor's ghost-writer went public (largely, one gathers, on the grounds that he had been replaced by a second spectre) was a string of revelations from senior literary fig- ures claiming that they, too, had cut their teeth down in the underworld of unpublish- able manuscripts and celebrity dyslexics. Terence Blacker apparently cost between £10,000 and £20,000 in his ghost-writing heyday. If it comes to that, I have done it myself, 16 or so years ago, with a superannu- ated SAS man named Arthur Beamish, who used to take me out to dinner in Charlotte Street and tell me how he had killed people. Among other exploits, Mr Beamish claimed to have been a member of Anwar Sadat's bodyguard (the Egyptian president's assassi- nation was supposedly an MI6-sponsored plot to destabilise the Middle East) and encountered Carlos the Jackal in a Major- can swimming pool. Sadly, his memoirs never did see the light.

If this catalogue of revelations and counter-revelations has a familiar ring, it should perhaps be said that the world of the professional ghost-writer is changing, becoming on the one hand much more brazen about its existence, and, on the other, vastly more mysterious. Pop musi- cians and sportsmen, in particular, are much less chary about thanking their helpers: the former pop journalist Peter Silverton, who touched up Glen Matlock's I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol for public consumption, was even

Td like to exchange this thesaurus please. It's an undesired, uninvited, unnecessary, unrequired, unsolicited, unwanted, unwelcome gift.' encouraged to write his own afterword to a paperback edition. To set against this is the existence of a shadowy cadre of ghosts, whose names are known only to a small cir- cle of publishers grateful for their ability to transform the most recalcitrant sow's ear into a silk purse. There is the redoubtable Robert Lacey of HarperCollins, who has taken over the task of hewing Lord Archer's prose into recognisable English. On receipt of the latest manuscript from the industrious peer, Mr Lacey apparently sequesters him- self for a month, an act of self-sacrifice for which, understandably, he wants no public credit. It would be unfair on Lord Archer for me to comment . . . perhaps when I retire,' was all he would tell this magazine.

About the darkest horse in literary Lon- don, though, is a man called Peter James. Mr James is not only the chief spook, the most accomplished rewrite artist in London, but a ghost-writer in every sense. He pro-- duces very distinguished ghost stories. Mr James, supposedly stone-deaf and con- tactable only by a closely guarded fax num- ber, is capable of imparting a sheen of readability to the thorniest pile of dross. It would be imprudent to name the beneficia- ries of these high-grade tinkerings, but he is known to have good relations with the Orion Group, who also publish his own work.

Unsurprisingly, in this age of word-pro- cessor-induced sloppiness, the market for the services of Peter James and script-fixers like him grows ever wider, and not merely in the world of books. Journalism, too, is becoming prime ghost-writer territory. Peo- ple may have laughed when the novelist Wendy Holden revealed that her CV included a stint 'working on' Tara Palmer- Tomkinson's Sunday Times column, but anyone with the most cursory knowledge of London medialand can probably name five or six columnists whose musings have to be knocked into shape by hired hands.

There is, as I hazarded earlier, nothing particularly shocking about this. Books and journalism, like any other branch of the entertainment industry, rely on branding to make their mark, whatever the exact circum- stances of their composition. The late Mrs Dick Francis's 'help' with her husband's books falls into much the same category as the Beatles' White Album, many of whose tracks were recorded by a single Beatle and assorted backing musicians. All the same, some kind of professional recognition would be a boost to what can often be a lonely life.

Perhaps, as a start, all celebrities who have employed the services of a ghost Michael Heseltine and Sir Alex, Johnny Rotten and Geri Halliwell — should be legally compelled to subsidise a literary prize for which Mr James and his kind would be eligible. Certainly, a ghost-writ- er's Booker would be vastly more enter- taining than the real thing. It would also a much more important task, perhaps usher a great many disagreeable truths about the modern publishing world out from behind the editorial desk.