The year of the spin doctor

It's over for another year. Normandie's mother has been staying with us over Christmas and she insisted on bringing from Perivale some of her late husband's extensive collection of Matt Monro memorabilia. On Christmas morning I tripped over the Bakelite bust of Matt in his From Russia with Love period, breaking it into four pieces. There were harsh words and my Christmas present to her (a teddy-shaped therapeutic neck massager) was thrown petulantly across the room.

So it's a relief to focus here on my review of the year. This is very different from my upcoming lighthearted Radio Two programme on New Year's Eve, A Look Back at 2002, in which I take a quirky, sideways look at the kind of news that we could be in for during the year ahead.

No, this is my assessment of 2001, probably the most keenly awaited futuristic year since 1984. And what an incredible year it has been from the image consultants' point of view. It was the year in which political public-relations expertise (I do so loathe that silly word "spin") has really come into its own. It was the year which saw incredible career breakthroughs for my two employees, Jo Moore and Mark Bolland, whom I have loaned out to my great mates Stephen Byers and the Prince of Wales, paying their salaries myself. I believe in private enterprise doing something for the public good. I believe in putting something back.

Image and message-grid consultancy are so important in the new century. As I told the board of Equitable Life in July, there is never a good moment for telling people their savings and pensions are down the toilet, especially if all you have to sugar the pill is the slogan: "It's an Equitable Life, Henry." You know and I know, loves, that life is not bloody equitable, and Henry can whistle for his pocket money. But you have to manage and shape that information for the consumer. We've sent out a free clock radio to each policyholder and hopefully that will have turned it around.

You have to make sure the client trusts you. You have to be on their wavelength. This year I have been working with So Solid Crew, a smashing bunch of guys and girls, exceptionally talented musically, and I am down with their tunes in such a real sense. I was chatting with them in their dressing room at the Astoria Theatre and said: "Listen my loves. Don't let this whole gunshots-inthecrowd thing faze you. I remember I was managing a tour by Jo Boxers in 1982 and the squaresville police got upset by crowd behaviour at the Hemel Hempstead Pavilion - people bringing glasses from the bar into the main auditorium instead of using the plastic beakers. But Officer Dibble has to understand this is what we deal with in the hood, and the m*****f*****s have gotta realise we're keepin' it real, my loves!" So Solid Crew just looked at me, stunned by my instinctive empathy with their creative needs.

Any assessment of 2001 must have some acknowledgement of my friend and mentor Peter Mandelson, whose front-line political career finally expired this year over the Hinduja passport misunderstanding. Peter has been like an elder brother to me and I'm proud to say that this year I, and my associates Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell in Downing Street, have asked for Peter's guidance many a time.

Because, by golly, we've had a tough time. Foot-and-mouth, or, as I prefer to term it, the Farming Hygiene Problem, was an enormous challenge. But it turned out to be this Government's most remarkable success in 2001. A 1,000-year tradition of British farming was wiped out. But what was the story in the media? Compensation-millionaire farmers fiddling the system! That really was an incredible achievement for me and this administration, though I say it myself.

Then there was 11 September. Many of you will have seen the pictures of me and the Prime Minister standing alongside Mayor Giuliani at Yankee Stadium. It was an extraordinary-moment for us both. The PM and I agreed that getting wholeheartedly behind the Americans was the right thing to do, especially as the New York City political establishment has been so supportive over the British experience of terrorism during the past 30 years.

So it was an attack on Afghanistan with all guns blazing, although here, again, my office was kept very busy indeed persuading the opinion-formers that the Northern Alliance was a lovely bunch of liberal, forwardthinking politicians who were going to remodel the country on the progressive democrat model, such as Denmark.

And then my talented young associate Jo Moore was pilloried by the despicable media for one small remark in an e-mail. I mean, don't the knockers realise that, really, the whole anti-terrorism thing is a gigantic but essentially benign diversionary tactic in itself; a super way of putting this administration above party politics? And that they are all a part of it? Really, I despair.

THERE'S also Mark Bolland, a lovely guy disparaged by certain pseudoposh columnists and jumped-up media moguls from our colonies and dominions because he didn't go to Eton. Honestly, this is exactly what is keeping this country down.

I like to think I have spread my net widely this year, not tied to any one political viewpoint. My essential radicalism helps. I have helped Iain Duncan Smith to his extraordinary position of greatness and, off the record, advised him that po-faced support for Mr Blair over Afghanistan was the ticket, combined with chip-chip-chipping away at Mr Byers over Railtrack. It's not ideal but, God knows, it was the only game plan available for the Conservatives in 2001.

So there it is. And, rest assured, as the last strains of Auld Lang Syne die away, my mind will turn once again to ways in which I can help the media present my clients - political and showbusiness - in a truly informed and responsible way in

2002. Cheers!

? Matthew Norman is away.