London - (ReUterus & Ass Mess): From queen mudder's personal diaries 1963-2001
I first came across William F Deedes in 1962 when some brainless upper crust Whitehall mandarin toff suggested he took over press relations in Harold Macmillan's government.
His reputation as a bland and totally pointless Fleet Street hack had preceded him and he was deemed to be a perfect pair of safe hands during the first real post-Suez crisis to hit the government since Macmillan was ordered by John F Kennedy's Administration to get rid of the Puppet Monarchy of Old Fatty Mountbatten.
As MP for Ashford and as a fearless drinker his reputation fared somewhat better than his writing skills and he was known up and down Fleet Street's hostelries as an inveterate imbiber of large brandies followed by vodka chasers.
Several Westminster establishments also owed their success to his relentless patronage where he could always be relied upon to mop up the best part of a crate of champagne in a single evening sitting helped only by a few close pals from the Foreign Correspondents' Club.
It was during these sessions that he honed his inimicable droning skills which, when at full throttle, could go on ad nauseam without a break until his companion drinkers were out cold on the floor from intoxication, boredom and a compulsive need to lose consciousness rather than listen to any more rambling diatribes abour Deedes' exploits in the Kalahari during the early World War II years.
Deedes always maintained that it was not his fault that Macmillan's government collapsed when it did.
In evidence before the House of Commons Security and Intelligence Committee Deedes had admitted that it was Macmillan who had procured the companion shooter to Lee Harvey Oswald to take out President John F Kennedy and ensured that, one day, he became President of the United States.
As a follow-up to this testimony Deedes, as a member of the MoD court-martial committee, summoned Macmillan's War Minister John Profumo in the middle of the night to interrogate him about sexual relations with Christine Keeler.
But his refusal to summon Lord Lucan in this same business earned him the sobriquet 'Stinker' after MI5 spooks said he personally shielded Lucan from the Keeler furor, well past the Irish peer's 1974 'disappearance'.
It is to his credit that even today in 2007 the Lucan mystery remains buried deep in the annals of British unsolved crimes.
This may be due to the lifelong infatuation Deedes had for Lady Lucan, whom he actually saw fire the fatal shot that killed her husband the night he murdered their children's nanny Sandra Rivett.
Deedes's last gentlemanly act that very night was to help ex-Grenadier Guard chums dig a massive hole under a Buckingham Palace Road chestnut tree and dump Lucan's hapless body inside before covering it over with instant ready-mixed concrete and rubble from a local building site.
This final heroic act ensured that the Lucan tragedy has remained an inexplicable mystery for some 33 years and that the Dowager Lady Lucan has escaped a life sentence in North London's Holloway Jail for Women.
