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   CLUB SANDWICH 63

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THE LOVABLE TERRORIST

You've read his writing, now meet the man. Mark Lewisohn investigates the phenomenon that is Geoff Baker, Paul and Linda's irrepressible 'hype merchant'
PHOTOGRAPH: LINDA MCCARTNEY

            "Did Paul laugh when you suggested that I be the subject of a Club Sarnie piece?" Geoff Baker enquires of me down the telephone, after which he audibly inhales another lungful of nicotine. "Did he ----ing fall over and die of hysterics?"
            Ladies and gentlemen, meet Geoff Baker, the definitive "hype merchant" (the job-title he prefers), purveyor of "scams", the all-talking, ever-smokmg, often-swearing, hard-working, laugh-a-minute, marvellously loyal, frequently-resigning, disarmingly honest and endlessly self-deprecating hairy anathema that is our Geoff, loved or just plain respected by all at MPL and writer of the features that bring smiles, smirks or sniggers to followers of his very-readable words, whether published in Club Sandwich or elsewhere. Club Sandwich 63
            "All that I tell you is true," he says, prefacing our discussion of his life, times and career. And it's worth him saying it too, because much of what he describes does seem pretty unbelievable.
            "I'm a hands-on publicist," Geoff declares when asked first to describe his function within MPL. "I come up with the ideas, the scams. I'm not the one who says 'Paul McCartney has no comment on this'; rather, I'm the one to say '---- off, how dare you ask that question?' I'm too volatile to do a proper PR job, but I am a quoted source at times. My business card calls me a 'Publicity Terrorist'. I'm the court jester around here, the manic- depressive. I look for the worst possible scenario and do it before the press does."
            OK. Well how, then, does Geoff describe his much-discussed writing style? Chatty? Tongue-in-cheek? Stream-of-consciousness? None of these. "Crap, but me," lie snaps, at last using the sort of expletive that doesn't oblige deletion in a family newspaper. "It's observant sarcasm, really. But I can write in any style I want, if I have to. I got into a lot of trouble here once when someone sent around a memo and I did a perfect piss-take of it and sent that around as a follow-up. But it's only done affectionately. I've never in my life consciously tried to hurt people. I just have what I'd call a very wide sense of humour..."
            The son of a hairdresser (there's a certain irony in there somewhere). Geoff was born in Lyme Regis, on the south coast of England, in April 1956. After local schooling he left the area, went up to Hatfield Polytechnic and returned south at 21 with a philosophy degree, BA Hons. A desire to then get into the advertising business came to nought when, contrary to all conventional techniques, he argued with his interviewer. So he turned to the world of ink, writing job-seeking letters to newspapers from Bristol to Southampton, eventually securing one much closer to home, with the Lyme Regis News, where he promptly showed all the flair required at his eventual destination, Britain's damnable tabloid press: he made up his very first story and was described by his editor as the worst journalist he'd come across in 40 years. (He got much better later.)
            Via posts in Exeter, Sidmouth and Birmingham, and a brief fling as a salesman for Mars Bars ("I'm very good at resignations: I got out of newspapers, joined Mars, broke their record for the fastest resignation - three days - and went back to journalism"), Geoff Baker ended up in the Street of Shame, working for the Daily Star. "I played the game, I did the job," he comments with typical matter-of-fact honesty, but showing neither pride nor embarrassment. "I hate compromise and can't stand any form of pussy-footing. I was the scum, and there's nobody on Fleet Street who's as bad now as I was then. I was a bastard, but I was good. Private Eye named me 'The Star's muck-raker in chief.
            "Most of us who went through that appalling nightmare have since pulled out, either by doing something else entirely or by going freelance. I mean, they assigned us to hound people, to pick fights in the street, and I did it. At least, I did it until I realised that I could no longer work under those conditions. But I became very hardened to it and still do know 'the rules of the game'. I haven't gone soft in that respect, but now I just apply those rules to protect Paul and Linda.
            "Actually, they, Paul and Linda, made me human again. I know that sounds like 'a line' but it's true: they made me care again, care about things other than myself. My marriage failed during the World Tour and they gave me trust, responsibility and affection. I didn't know that there was any worth left in me at all, and Paul -knowing what sort of potential monster he'd taken on - was assuring me that I was OK. I'd come to hate myself by that time."
            The spiritual redemption of Geoff Baker, from Fleet Street hack into MPL nice guy, all came about through his involvement in the tour, for which -although he remains very much a valuable part of the team today - he was originally employed. "I got a call from Paul's PR, who I knew, saying 'Do you want to work for Paul McCartney?' It's a bit like asking 'Would you like to sleep with Kim Basinger? - a pointless question. Paul had thought that it would be a good idea to get a hack, 'to set a thief to catch a thief, as they say, in other words to feed the press the tour stories they'd want so they wouldn't have to come ferreting around for them."
            Having succeeded, straight away, in forthrightly (but accidentally) insulting Richard Ogden, Paul's manager, Geoff met Paul tor the first time at Elstree Film Studios where the band was in final, full rehearsal for the imminent World Tour. "I managed to crush Paul's hand when we first shook hands, then - when they'd finished playing their full set, which amazed me - I told him 'You're gonna tear their ----ing heads off with that, man!' And that's how I got the job: by swearing at Paul McCartney and crushing his hand."
            The value of having Geoff Baker on the team has rarely, if ever, been in any doubt from that day forth. His sheer industry, let alone good humour, was instantly manifested in The four Newsletter, a not-for-pubhcation news-sheet that combined necessary schedule information with wit, facetiousness and tittle-tattle, and was produced approximately every other day during that long jaunt for distribution exclusively among the entourage. "Paul had the idea that we should keep people in touch with what was going on," Geoff recalls, "and maybe report a little bit of gossip. So 1 started doing it my way: loads of gossip, completely rude and full of m-jokes. As Paul says: 'rock and roll's about breaking the rules'. It's not government, it's entertainment, and there's too much pomposity in rock. It worked very well too."
            To produce so regularly and so entertainingly such a news-sheet meant that, while others slept, Geoff would be tapping away at his laptop word-processor in hotel rooms the world over, a cigarette ever hanging, Andy Capp like, from his mouth. "I'd wake up about eight o'clock, have a packet of Marlboro and five cans of diet Coke, with caffeine, and start writing," he remembers. Paul used to submit letters for publication under assumed names, and people used to say 'You can't print that, Paul'll be crazy when he finds out!', not realising that they were written by him.
            "I actually think that Paul would make a very good journalist," continues Geoff. "He's got a bloody good nose for a story. On the tour he'd often give me ideas about such-and-such a thing that had happened. He's also very observant: I'm forever writing reminder notes on my hand, tiny little scribbles, and he'll see one from across the other side of the room and tackle me about it..."
            Above all, perhaps the secret of the McCartney-Baker chemistry rests with their mutual honesty. "I learnt very early on that the worst thing one can do in this job is to try to deceive Paul and Linda," Geoff says. "And I get particularly angry when people knock them. I think that Paul is the greatest living show business star on this planet, but he doesn't make me shake in my shoes, and I'd much rather tell them when something bad is about to happen."
            Three years ago, when Paul employed Geoff Baker with the thought of setting a thief to catch a thief, little could he have realised what an engagingly honest old rogue he was taking on. Long may his cigarette dangle within the MPL empire.