There’s fuc*k all on Rockall   57°35’48”N 13°41’19”W
Contact The Rockall Times FAQ
  Monday 30th August 2004  World News   Powered by Yeast Logic
[E] [P] [I]

Lord Archer to pen Mark Thatcher biography

Expect fireworks to the sound of distant gunfire
by our man in Harare

Convicted perjurer and highly-talented author Lord Archer of Belmarsh will pen a sensational biography of international businessman Mark Thatcher, we can exclusively reveal. The news comes immediately in the wake of Thatcher's shock arrest on charges of paying an old Etonian and his chums overthrow the government of sun-kissed Equatorial Guinea.

Lord Archer is an inspired choice for the job, having first-hand experience of creative financial transactions and prisons. He will doubtless bring all of his literary talents to bear on the story of how the son of the daughter of a humble Lincolnshire grocer defied his modest background, limited academic ability and poor driving skills to become the highly respected multi-millionaire wheeler-dealer he is today.

Our artist's impression of how the Thatcher biography might lookA literary agent told The Rockall Times: "The book publishing world is in a state of gusset-moistening excitement at the prospect of this blockbuster. After all, it's the story with everything — iffy Saudi arms deals, the Paris-Dakar Rally, former SAS men going to give it to the dusky chaps in Bongo Bongo Land — all set against a backdrop of a mother's love for her brilliant, misunderstood son. Sensational."

Archer will apparently donate his £1m fee to prisoners' rights charities for whom he has worked tirelessly since his spell languishing in jail at the pleasure of Her Imperial Majestyness Queen Liz II of all the Englands. The news of this beneficence was greeted with some relief by Simon Mann — the former soldier currently rotting in a Zimbabwean prison on charges of attempting to buy arms for the coup in Equatorial Guinea at the behest of Mark "The Jackal" Thatcher. Mann faces ten years in Harare's toughest slammer, a nightmarish hellhole in which prisoners are routinely beaten senseless and where the library's most recent copy of Soldier of Fortune magazine is a well-thumbed issue from July 1982 featuring an article on weekend breaks in the Seychelles by Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare.

Speaking from his cell on a pay-as-you-go mobile which he had obtained by acting as "white bitch" for some of Zimbabwe's hardest sex offenders, Mann told us: "Yes, I plotted to overthrow president Teodoro Obiang Nguema in return for cash, oil concessions and a job for life as Severo Moto's [Equatorial Guinea's exiled opposition leader] right-hand hardman, but I'm British and I want Mark Thatcher to ask his mum to get me out of here. I mean, come on Scratcher, it's just not cricket."

Mann's plea was echoed last night by fellow Dog of War Nick du Toit — currently in the rather inconvenient position of being held in the Guinean capital Malabo and likely to face the firing squad as a result of his shenanigans. "It's a bit rum that Scratcher has left us in the lurch," du Toit told our oil-rich West African dictatorship correspondent. "Ok, we planned to pop a cap in Nguema's ass, but it was just business. I'm sure the president will understand that. Did I mention that I've got five kids and another on the way? Can I go now, please?"

Thatcher, meanwhile is on bail and has been ordered not to leave the district surrounding his luxury Cape Town pad pending a possible trial. His lovely wife told The Rockall Times: "It's a relief, to be honest. The last time he tried to drive further than 10 miles from the house, Scratcher got completely lost and had to be brought home by an international rescue team paid for by his parents. It was a complete nightmare."

Previously

 Go on then, hard man