Unlike another famous railway terminus the livestock arriving at Whitemoor are not enjoined to work for their freedom.  Barry 
and his kind just have to serve their time and their welfare is ensured.  The prison warders water, feed and bed Barry George 
with the kind of good husbandry that even a animal rights militant would not object to.  He has put weight on, “several stones”; 
in fact, he looks like the “Category A” porker that will never go to market.  Despite his evident well-fed looks, Barry despises his Whitemoor sty and fantasises about “When I am free”.  Given that he is going to bring home their bacon for the next 25 years the warders will make sure he stays just where he is.  Not for nothing is there a faded blue standard flapping on a flagpole outside the entrance to Whitemoor bearing the warders’ slogan: "Investor in People".

The slogan of the organisation set up to commemorate the woman Barry shot in the head on her doorstep at 11.33 am, 26 April, 1999, is “Not for Nothing”.  The Jill Dando Institute of Crime’s emblem is a forget-me-not – her favourite flower.  Barry likes flowers too.  After he murdered her, he actually put some on the impromptu shrine that sprung up outside her house. 

Some 14 months later, when Barry was arrested and interviewed, he told Detective Constable Snowden about this tribute. 
Snowden was shocked that Barry had done such a thing and he commented almost in disbelief, “You took flowers on the 26th!”

George replied, “Yes.”

DC Snowden asked, “How can you remember that?”

George answered, “You tend to remember things like that.” 

What George did not tell the interrogating detectives was that the flowers were yellow daffodils and were not in tribute to Jill Dando but to his long-dead alter ego, Freddie Mercury of Queen. 
Freddie loved flowers too – especially yellow ones; in fact, he loved anything yellow.

The reason I drove Robert Charig to Whitemoor was I had recently handed in a manuscript on the Dando murder to John Blake of Blake Publishing and I wanted Charig to put to George the case I make against him in the book.  Charig was the natural choice as they have known each other for nearly twenty years: he is probably the only close friend that George has ever had.  They used to practise karate together and whenever George wanted advice on his many problems and disputes with the NHS, the local council, the social services and so on he would consult Charig.  A lot of these problems and disputes concerned George’s irritable bowel syndrome.

In fact, immediately after the kill, he used some of his medical correspondence about this unfortunate condition to set up what 
the prosecution at George’s trial called his “alibi of behaviour”.   After shooting Dando in the back of the head, he set off down 
Gowan Avenue towards a park next to Fulham Football Ground.  There he took off his long-haired wig, changed into a distinctive yellow blouson and picked up a carrier bag full of letters that documented the many campaigns he has waged against various bodies over such matters. Twenty-five minutes after the murder, he was in a nearby local advice centre for the disabled, creating a hullabaloo with the staff over the way doctors were ignoring his irritable bowel syndrome.  His purpose was not as he claimed to seek “help” but to present himself indelibly as different in appearance from the gunman and in demeanour utterly 
incompatible with someone who had just committed a murder.

Now I like to think of myself as a compassionate man but as with us all there are limitations.  I have learned to empathise with… even to share the pain of those who suffer from such afflictions as HIV, breast cancer and long-term imprisonment but I experience compassion fatigue in the face of irritable bowel syndrome.  My view is that those afflicted with this condition should suffer it silently and, if the problem becomes impossible, then they should either have a colostomy or do the honourable thing and dispose of themselves as discretely as possible.  I realise this is very non PC-ish of me but in mitigation I would plead that my normally high level of correctness was beaten down by the strain of investigating and writing about the Dando murder.  It was an abnormal, unnatural, surreal crime that perplexed everyone except George.  To understand it, I had no choice but to freely expose myself to what one witness at George’s trial called “the nutter factor”.  The nutters did get to me and, as a consequence, I am less than compassionate about the constitutional afflictions of an unfortunate like Barry George.  In hindsight, I realise that I should have trained as a psychiatric nurse before taking on the assignment.

I was reminded of this on the day I drove Robert Charig to Whitemoor Prison.  He is a likeable, concerned man but I don’t 
think his long association with Barry George has been good for his health.   Even he would admit that he is a broken man. 
Practising martial arts damaged his back, a surgeon’s slip of the scalpel damaged his spinal cord, condemning him to permanent 
pain and a lifetime of medication.  He walks with the aid of a walking stick, needs a disabled sticker for his car and has taken to 
eating as a salve for his problems.  He is even fatter than George.  His upper lip is still stiff, though; during the journey in answer 
to my inquiry if things would get better he said stoically, “No.  There is nothing to be done; I just have to make the best of it. 
Soldier on as they say.”  I would have been even more sympathetic had he then not announced that we had missed the turn-off for Whitemoor and had gone sixty miles out of our way.

We had started out from Sloane Square so well, too…  He had volunteered to do the map reading as his father had been a rally driver and Robert had been navigating for him since he was 15.  Indeed, one of his current projects is to finish a marine 
navigation course.  “One thing you won’t get with me is lost,” he had said emphatically as he settled into the passenger’s seat 
and opened the AA’s Motoring Atlas of Britain.  Having to admit that we had lost our way was clearly a shock to his system as 
he immediately asked to pull into the nearest Little Chef.  “I need some calories,” he explained, “because my blood sugar level is dangerously low.”  I was tempted to point out that given all his visible fat reserves he had ample fuel in the tank, but I kept my 
own counsel, pulled in as he suggested, then watched him attack a large portion of French fried dowsed in Heinz ketchup. 
Thankfully we made it to Whitemoor in time for the visit.

While Charig was inside with Barry I sat in my car outside watching the hearty, ruddy-faced warders coming in and out of the prison.  They clearly enjoyed their work; I saw one slap his thighs in delight as he was issued with his keys.  I thought I heard the strains, “Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to work we go…” but I am sure it was just my imagination.  I was confident that Charig would put to George all the points that I had briefed him on during the journey.  He is bright: he read law and was a journalist for a while.  But he did say before went in, “I am not looking forward to this.  Talking to Barry is hard at the best of times but sitting with him makes my back ache.  Sometimes the pain is unbearable.”  He did not clarify if his pain came from Barry’s conversation or the prison seating.

As I sat there for the fifty or so minutes, I contemplated my own pain.  I had made the journey out of journalistic duty really.  The book was finished but if something new like a confession emerged from the visit I faced the prospect of having to re-write it.  Again.  There had already been two re-writes – both traumatic but a third might, I felt, tip me from the mildly psychopathic to the full-blown psychotic.

The first was over my researcher at the trial, who decided after I finished my first version that his name instead of mine should 
go on the cover.   This is rather unique position for an author to be in but my researcher was Benjamin “Benjie the Binman” Pell.  “I solved the murder,” he told me.  “He was only convicted because of me.  All the ideas in the book are mine.  Therefore my name should be on the cover.”  I agreed – agreeing with Benjie is the only way to shut him up.

“Benjie,” as his friend Max Clifford once said of him, “is brilliant – in small doses.”  Nearly three months of working with him during the George trial had resulted in my absorbing dangerously high doses of Pell’s peculiar radiation.  As a consequence, I had contracted several outbreaks of Pell fever, which is a condition characterised by such symptoms as speaking extremely quickly, very loudly and in a falsetto pitch while also splattering saliva over everyone within ear-range.  This is apart from developing insomina, a passion for Talmudic logic-chopping… and much more besides.  It is extremely debilitating for everyone except its progenitor.  Like all real nutters, the only way Pell keeps himself sane is to drive everyone around him mad.

Yet, Pell understood George; he would often comment, “We are very similar.”  Both have personality disorders that they can switch on and off at will, certainly sufficiently well to outwit cops and psychiatrists; both are treated as pariahs by conventional 
society; both feel acutely aggrieved at the way society dismisses them; both enjoy tricking and teasing those who reject or discriminate against them; both are desperate for fame and recognition of what they believe are their unique talents; both are 
chronically untidy but retain their own order among their seemingly disordered living quarters; both are obsessive collectors; both are fanatical about Freddie Mercury and Queen music.  The big difference between them, however, is that Pell is much cleverer than George.

Benjie saw through Barry.  He unpacked the bizarre way Barry’s two driving obsessions - Freddie Mercury and martial arts – were painted all over the kill.  During the trial I summarised some of Benjie’s insights and they were passed onto the Orlando Pownall, the barrister who led for the Crown.  Pownall incorporated some of them into his closing speech.  He expressed his gratitude to me immediately after George was found guilty and would have none of my down-playing what I had given him as merely “a literary interpretation” of George’s motives.  He shook his head, “No.  I am sure you are right.”  When I told Benjie, he immediately said, “That’s it.  They will have to give me the reward money for getting the murderer.”

Despite what I thought was my sterling contribution to making the world aware of his genius, Benjie was not happy with the first 
version of Dead on Time.  “Remember I run Fleet Street,” he threatened, “and, if I am not happy with our book, there will be 
no serialisation or reviews.”   At that stage, before I did my first rewrite, it was “our book”; after I finished, Benjie called it “my 
book”.  I didn’t tell him, but at about that time I recommended to Channel 4’s Peter Dale that the next Big Brother series should have Benjamin Pell as the sole contestant.

It was a harrowing experience being Benjie’s ghost-writer and I disappeared to France to let my nervous system recuperate. 
However, when I returned, it was to discover that the book’s publisher thought it was too wordy for his readers.  An ex- 
Sunday People showbiz editor, John Blake has made a fortune publishing books for a readership nobody thought was able to 
read.  After he'd read it, John commented, "Yes, it is fascinating but only the big-word brigade will be able to understand it." 
He asked me re-edit it.  During the editing, I fell out with his "top editor" over the percentage of words over four letters.  Blake 
Publishing has its in-house style, which is why their best seller, “The Guv’nor”, was broken up into two syllables for the hard of 
reading.

This re-edit turned into another re-write ordeal.  After finishing, I decided that I needed to go back to France but I left without 
telling either Benjie or John Blake. Both lay siege to my mobile, which I left on but did not answer.  Well, their calls anyway… 
The trouble was they made it vibrate and ring so fiercely that the SIM card burnt out.  Such was my guilt at doing a runner, it 
naturally displaced into eating vast quantities of moules and soupe de poisson washed down with flagons of gorgeous Merlot.  I drove the husband’s Mercedes of the beautiful, rich, cultured woman who guided me on this tour of Bordeaux chateaux.  She 
convinced me that this was the proper healing process for someone stricken by guilt, traumatised by re-writes and demoralised at being just an over-wordy ghost-writer.

I returned strong and resolute, empowered by the knowledge that the next time there was any heavy flak over Dead on Time I could retreat to France to duck it.  As always, on leaving, I thought how people who cause so much trouble because they want to run the world need such trips to learn that enjoying the world is a far worthier enterprise than trying to run it.

These were some of the painful thoughts that tormented me as I waited for Charig outside Whitemoor Prison.  I knew I faced 
two hours driving back to London debriefing him on the visit.  The prospect made me realise how I was flirting with psychosis. 
It was time for closure.  For three months during the trial I had been exposed daily to both Benjie and Barry.  I assumed I had 
got away undamaged but I didn’t know if there was some fall-out from the experience incubating an incurable psychosis in my 
subconscious.  Enough was enough.  Who cared what George said.  He murdered Jill Dando; he was convicted of it; I had a 
pretty good idea why he did it; he is just another nutter who thankfully won’t see the outside again until he is infirm and senile. 
To write any more would be just guilding the forget-me-not.

Charig definitely came out of Whitemoor with less lean on his walking stick than when he went in.  In fact, if the disabled police 
had been watching, he would have lost his benefit.  When he got in the car, he said, “I’m glad that is over…”  He gave a long sigh, then dived into his bag for some medication.  I didn’t ask for what.  It could have been Barry, the chair in the visiting room, or just indigestion from too many French fries.  Who knows…

I took off like I had just made it over the wall.  And it is a lot easier navigating back to London than going to Whitemoor from it.  I did it in an hour and a half with no Little Chef stops on the way. I took Charig through what George had said even though I didn’t need it for the book.

George has shaved off the goatee beard and moustache that he began growing once the Dando Squad got onto him and which 
he was still sporting at the trial; he has also put on “several stones” and is “a bit gummy… he needs some dentures.  I asked him how his back was…”.
  George also suffers from a bad back.  I wanted to investigate why all these martial arts’ warriors get lower back injuries but inquiring about any of Charig’s medical conditions does tend to spill over into a comprehensive overview of them all.  I felt that ignorance on this burning issue was the wiser course and said nothing.  When asked about his back, George gave him the thumbs’ down.
“He complained that they won’t give him a bed board…”, Charig said.  I felt it was time to divert from medical matters and asked what he had told George about the book.

“I told him that it was finished – I thought that was best - and said that you are sure he murdered her because of the influence of 
Freddie Mercury and Ninja assassins.  I said why don’t you send McVicar a VO [visiting order].  He said ‘Tell him I'm a 
businessman.  After he sends me in his book, then we can talk.’”

I commented that George seems to want a piece of the action but how much is a confession worth.  Nothing actually.  I then asked if George had reacted to my analysis and protested ‘this is outrageous, I’m innocent’ or something like that.

Charig replied, “No.  But his Japanese obsession… this idea of him as being a Ninja assassin.  He laughed at that.  But later he asked for some books and I said presumably Japanese stuff.  He said yes.”  Charig then laughed at this typical example of how Barry shops himself.

“Ohh…” he added, “The most interesting thing of all was when I asked him what records I could send him in.  He said that his mum had sent him some badly recorded album of Queen’s greatest hits.  He can only have tapes.  Anyway I asked what was his favourite Queen song.  If you can only have one Queen song what would be.  It was almost like he knew what I was getting at.  He didn’t want to answer.  He looked away and leaned back, then he said, ‘Bo’Rap’ [Bohemian Rhapsody].  I said that yeah that’s my favourite too.

“I could tell he nearly said something else, so I said what were you going to say.  He didn’t like to tell me.  He said, ‘There was another one.  I don’t like to say, not in here.’  He then came out with ‘Who wants to live forever’.     I asked if you had to choose between the two which would it be.  He said, ‘Bo'Rap.’  I said you do realise what the lyrics of Bo’Rap are.  Remember the lyrics.  ‘Mamma just killed a man, put a gun against his head…’   There’s the colour yellow too.  I asked him did he know yellow was Freddie’s favourite colour.  He didn’t answer and began to talk about the forensics.”

I continued to listen and ask questions but I had heard enough to confirm what I already knew, which was already incorporated in Dead on Time.  Charig knew the import of Bo’Rap but not of “Who wants to live forever”.  It was Freddie Mercury’s theme song from the 1986 film Highlander, which George has watched so often he can quote all the lines and sing all the songs.  It is a mystical fable about assassination in the quest for immortality with a heavy emphasis on Japanese samurai.  It also contains the advice that the best way to kill a non-immortal is a bullet in the back of the head.

A lot of the journalists attending George’s trial came to view him because of his professional hypochondria, crackpot beliefs, 
Freddie Mercury idolatry and Bible-totting antics as a figure of fun.  But some nutters are not funny.  Their magical thinking – 
whether via messages from skygods or their own divination of the spirit world – leads them to kill others.  And they kill pitilessly, malevolently and righteously because they have a mission, albeit one that only makes sense to them.  9-11 and the carnage in Afghanistan has made us all less tolerant of nutters, which perhaps accounted for my own shift in mood on my drive back to London.  George is no bumbling porker who just happened to execute a woman he did not even know; he is a murderous Animal Farm pig: self-elected, degenerate, demonic… as he can’t be slaughtered, then he should be penned up in a sty for life.

As I drove back vaguely listening to Charig, I remembered Norman Mailer’s wonderful The Executioner’s Song [1979], his factoid novel about Gary Gilmore, who was the first murderer to be executed after the USA’s moratorium on capital punishment.   The banal mumbo-jumbo that had motivated George to execute Jill Dando had reminded me of the mystical nihilism of Gilmore.   What George had told Charig was another executioner’s song.

John McVicar    November 2001
 

                                      Copyright© John McVicar