ARCHER TIMELINE 1940. April 15: Jeffrey Howa
ARCHER TIMELINE
1940.
April 15: Jeffrey Howard Archer is born in central London.
1963.
October: Archer arrives at Oxford University on a one-year Diploma of Education course.
He stays there for the next three years.
1966.
July 11: Marries Mary Weeden at the Oxford University Church.
September: Runs for Great Britain against Sweden in his only international meeting.
Finishes third in the 200 metres.
1967
Elected as GLC councillor.
1969.
October: Selected as parliamentary candidate for Louth, Lincolnshire.
Allegations of expenses discrepancies arise relating to his post at the charity United Nations Organisation.
December 4: Elected as MP for Louth with 10,000 majority.
Archer claims at 29 he was the youngest ever MP when in fact he was the fifth.
1972
May: First son William born.
1974
February: Re-elected in General Election despite the Tory party losing power.
June: Second son Jamie born.
August 22: Resigns seat due to imminent bankruptcy after his disastrous investment pnds stlg 350,000 investment in the Aquablast firm.
Crash of the share price forces the sale of the family.
Archer is never officially declared bankrupt but is forced to stand down as an MP.
1975.
November: Flies to Toronto to give evidence in the Aquablast affair.
Caught taking three suits from a department store in Toronto.
Archer is freed when he claims he did not realise he was walking out of the shop.
1976.
First novel ‘Not a Penny More, not a Penny Less’ is published in America (April) and Britain (September).
Further novels ‘Shall We Tell the President?’ (1977), ‘Kane and Abel’ (1980) and Prodigal Daughter (1982) finally pay off the debts and enable the purchase of the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, Cambridge.
1979.
Meets Andrina Colquhoun and they become lovers.
Colquhoun, a former friend of Lord Lucan, becomes Archer’s personal assistant to hide the affair.
1985.
January: Angela Peppiatt is taken on as Archer’s personal assistant and secretary.
He has dumped Andrina after promising Margaret Thatcher he will ‘tidy up his personal life’.
September 12: Archer rewarded with the job as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.
October 10: The Nigel Dempster diary article in the Daily Mail talks about the end of the Colquhoun affair.
It is the first Mary Archer has heard of it since it began in 1979.
Peppiatt moves with Archer to Conservative Central Office and buys a smaller A5 diary for ease of movement between there and Archer’s vast riverside home at Alembic House.
1986
September 8: Jeffrey Archer goes to dinner at Le Caprice with Richard Cohen and his wife at 8.
30pm.
They leave at around 10.
30pm to 10.
45am.
Between midnight and 1am he meets Monica Coughlan at Shepherds’ Market and pays her pnds stlg 70 pounds for sex in the Albion Hotel.
September 9: Archer has dinner with Terence Baker at the Sambuca restaurant from 8pm.
October 24: Archer gets assistant Michael Stacpoole to hand over cash to Monica Coghlan at Victoria Station in a bid to get her out of the country.
October 26: The story of Archer and the prostitute appears in the News of the World.
Archer resigns as Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party.
November 1: A racier version of Archer and the prostitute appears in the Daily Star.
November 5: Archer issues a writ for libel against the Star and News of the World.
November 18: Terence Baker goes to Lord Mishcon on the request of Jeffrey Archer to talk about an alibi.
December 23: The wrong date is entered by the Star’s defence team.
Archer now has to respond to September 9 and not September 8.
1987
December/January: Archer approaches Ted Francis to provide an alibi to cover September 9.
He agrees to do so to protect a date with Andrina Colquhoun.
In return Archer promises to finance Ted’s Enid Blyton TV project with 20,000 pounds.
January 8: Archer asks Peppiatt to get a blank Economist A4 diary for 1986.
She gets friend Gavin Pearce to buy one for ten pounds and also begins to research TV programmes for the night of September 9.
Archer adds entries to the blank diary to back up his new Ted Francis alibi.
January 22: Ted Francis sends a letter to Lord Mishcon explaining the brief nature of his meeting and a telephone call.
Some time later he collects 12,000 pounds from the bank opposite Archer’s home, supposedly for the Enid Blyton project.
February: Peppiatt begins claiming double her expenses twice.
She is also buying expensive gifts for up to seven of Archer’s mistresses using her credit card.
March 12: Lord Mishcon asks Ted Francis to give more details about his alibi for Archer.
March 16: Archer applies for the libel trial to be heard quickly so any affect on his ambitions will be dealt with speedily.
March 26: Ted Francis sends more details to Lord Mishcon.
By a coincidence it is also spotted by Lovells that a mistake has been made about the date of the allegation against Archer.
April 6: Lovells, the Star’s solicitors, write to Mishcon to correct he date at the centre of the libel trial and also to demand to see any diaries.
The date is formally changed back to September 8 despite opposition from Archer’s legal team.
April 29: Archer asks Angie Peppiatt to copy entries in his handwriting for September 8 and morning September 9 from an A4 piece of paper into a blank A4 Letts diary.
She photocopies the results and keeps the receipt.
May 11: Photocopies of the main office diary (bogus A4 one) for the dates September 8 and morning of September 9 are sent to Lovells by Lord Mishcon.
May 22: Lovells demand to inspect the original diary.
May 26: Peppiatt photocopies further entries for the week 5-12 September in the bogus A4 diary and also copies pages of the Economist diary.
She sends the diary to Lord Mishcon.
Peppiatt also has a witness statement typed up and signed by colleague Caroline Norman to protect herself.
June 10: Lovells ask to see any other diaries and request Archer swears an affidavit.
June 15: Copies of entries in the Economist diary are forwarded to Lovells.
Compared to Peppiatt’s photocopies they reveal Archer added entries to back up his alibi.
June 16: Lovells once again ask for an affidavit to be sworn by Archer.
June 23: Archer swears an affidavit he has no more diaries in his possession other than the bogus A4 diary and the Economist diary.
He now faces a charge relating to this document.
June 25: Lovells inspect the Economist diary.
July 7: The libel trial begins at the High Court.
July 24: Archer is awarded pnds sltg 500,000 damages on winning the case.
December 24: Peppiatt resigns after Archer phones to say he has stopped her pnds stlg 10,000 bonus, December salary and various expenses cheques.
She takes the office diaries for 1985 to 1987 and also documents which may expose Archer’s activities during those years.
Mrs Peppiatt keeps her ‘company car’, a Volkswagen Golf worth pnds stlg 9,000, in compensation.
1989
Adam Raphael discovers the existence of Peppiatt’s diary while researching for his book about libel actions (published in 1993).
1991
April: Terence Baker, Archer’s key alibi witness dies of a heart attack.
Archer annoys Ted Francis at his annual Shepherds’ Pie and Krug Champagne Party by announcing in front of embarrassed guests: ‘This man owes me 20,000 pounds.
‘
1992
June: Archer is awarded a peerage.
He becomes Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare of Mark in the County of Somerset.
1994
January 18: Announcement of takeover of Anglia TV of which Mary Archer is a director.
Archer had bought shares days before in the name of friend Broosk Saib (corr) and sold them shortly afterwards, making a profit of pnds stlg 80,000.
July – DTI investigation concludes no action to be taken against Archer over insider share dealing allegations.
1998
June 10: Ted Francis reveals alibi story to biographer Michael Crick.
1999
October 1: Archer declares his candidacy in the Mayoral elections.
Later that month Ted Francis approaches publicist Max Clifford about the alibi story.
They negotiate a deal worth pnds stlg 150,000, but Francis only takes 14,000 (enough to buy a second hand car) and 5,000 for charity.
Clifford nets 30,000.
November 4, 9, 12: Series of phone calls between Ted Francis and Lord Archer about the false alibi which are taped by the News of the World.
November 19: Archer meets with the Editor and Managing Director of the News of the World to discuss the story.
November 20: Archer issues a press statement claiming he concocted the alibi to protect the identity of Andrina Colquohon.
She was in fact on holiday at the time.
November 21: The story is printed in the News of the World.
Lord Archer quits the race to be London Mayor.
December: Police interview Peppiatt.
She shows them the A5 diary.
Later that month reports emerge of Terence Baker’s admission he had perjured himself at the libel trial as told to TV controller Nick Elliot.
2000
February 5: Archer is expelled from the Tory Party for five years.
February 6: Archer’s literary agent Richard Cohen reveals the author asked him to change his evidence about the Caprice dinner date before the 1987 libel hearing.
April 7: Archer and Ted Francis arrested and interviewed.
May: Michael Stacpoole suffers stroke during holiday in Thailand.
September 26: Archer is charged.
Hours later he stars in the premiere of his play ‘The Accused’ playing a doctor on trial for the murder of his wife at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.
2001
January 20: Play flops when it is transferred to the West End and closes after just two weeks.
May 11: Peppiatt discovers evidence that Archer wanted to fake the Economist Diary.
The lawyers have already begun legal argument in the case and two new charges are added.
May 30: The Lord Archer perjury trial begins.
July 7: Drug addict Gary Day jailed for life after he kills Monica Coghlan’s in a head-on car smash.
July 12: Lord Archer’s mother Lola Hayne, 87, dies from a stroke in a nursing home in Saffron Walden, Essex.
July 13: Jury retires to consider verdict on the Lord Archer trial.
July 19: Jury returns with its guilty verdicts and Lord Archer is jailed for four years.
ends
