Mike's Minute: Remembering Jeffrey Archer

When I spoke to Jeffrey Archer last year, he didn’t look anything other than what he has always looked like – vibrant, well, and full of good vigour. 

So his death is a shock. 

He looked like a very good 86-year-old. Or 85-year-old, as he was when I talked to him. I also talked to him a couple of years earlier when we were in London for the coronation. 

We got on well. He was one of those guests that over the years you lost count of how many times you had talked to them. 

One of the great joys of having been around a while is you get to talk to most of them. But the downside of having been around a while, is eventually they will start to pass. 

I wasn’t expecting Archer to go at mid 80s. That was a bloke who had a purpose, who was still working daily, who was still in demand in books, who was still revelling in life and had more cricket stories to tell. 

I met him in Christchurch when he was on a book tour. Side note, that's perhaps one of the sadder changes in modern communication. 

Authors don’t really need to tour any more. They can turn on the WhatsApp or sit on the Zoom. 

Ironically, and perhaps a small regret on my part in London in 2023 for the coronation, I was due to go to his famed apartment overlooking the Thames, but had to cancel and do it from the studio because of timing and coronation traffic.  

On my first meeting in Christchurch after the interview, I was doing mornings, he said, "let's go to lunch". So down Kilmore we walked, turned into Durham and sat down at a place I can't remember, other than it was well established. 

And we had soup. I had soup because he had soup. And because in the early 90s I was about 25-years-old and Archer was a rockstar and I wasn’t sure why I was at lunch with Jeffrey Archer. 

But the stories! Lunch went on, not because of more soup or a lot of wine, but because the stories didn’t stop. In terms of regale and laughter, it's a tie between lunch with Archer and dinner with Bob Hawke. Both were world class at stories. 

And once you meet the connection for life is made and so it was with Jeffrey Archer. Too many interviews to count, but every one a joy. If you're energised by bright, successful people Archer was your man. 

He was brilliant. He will be missed.