I wasn’t really looking forward to doing my Times Radio show last night.
Our top story was the murder of Ann Widdecombe. It was on every front page during the paper review. It was the subject of a lot of the texts from the audience. And it all felt a bit surreal.
In recent years, I had struck up an unlikely friendship with Ann. We were on a TV show together when we first met – my first appearance on that particular show – and I’ll be honest with you, I was dreading it.
We are very different people. I didn’t expect us to have much in common. She held views that I found objectionable. I thought this encounter may be a bit… frosty. But within the first few minutes, I realised that the Ann Widdecombe I expected to find was only half the story.
Ann held my hand through that first appearance, gently nudging me in the right direction as we went along. She was graceful and generous in a way that caught me off guard. In the years since, I got to know her quite well. I wouldn’t want to claim we were best friends, but I did find a warm friendship where I least expected it.
Ann wasn’t the caricature of cruelty that she was often portrayed as. She was hard, blunt, unflinching – I think she was wrong about a lot of things – but she wasn’t cruel. She was warm, and kind, and curious.
She was infectious company. You knew when she’d entered a room, and you’d miss her when she left it. She was a serious person, but she wore it lightly. She wasn’t afraid to be the butt of a joke. She understood the power of herself as a punchline, and was unafraid to use it. At the same time, she somehow managed to retain her integrity. I guess that’s because she really, truly, had conviction.
Some of those convictions, some of the things Ann Widdecombe believed, I thought were profoundly wrong, particularly on gay rights. And I am not speaking out of turn. I had no hesitation in telling her as much, and she had no hesitation in disagreeing.
To some people, a friendship with somebody who holds a view you find so objectionable would be intolerable. I understand why somebody would feel that way.
But I realised, from my friendship with Ann, that the alternative is even more intolerable, where we entrench ourselves in the comfort and safety of unchallenging people, and reject the opportunity to persuade, to change hearts and minds, because we haven’t bothered turning up to the conversation in the first place. We think we are being righteous, when in reality we’re just refusing to engage with the possibility that somebody is a complex, multi-faceted human being.
These last few days have been surreal. I cannot square the person being talked about in the news with the person I knew. I keep wanting to text her and say, hey, Ann, you’re on the news… you’ll never guess what they are saying about you. Then I realise, I can’t. It’s impossible to imagine how she felt at the end. I can’t let my mind wander into those final moments.
The full story is yet to be written, but she will come to be remembered as different things to different people. A political hero to some; to others she will simply be a person whose views were beyond the pale. For me – my Ann Widdecombe – she is a reminder that it is possible to find common ground where you may least expect it, and a friendship in an unlikely place.
Thank you, Ann.
