Multi-millionaire and best-selling author Lord Archer is the bouncing ball man of the British political scene.
One minute he is writhing in the gutter, trying to beat off his enemies and the next he is riding high. He has fought his way out of the corner and usually back into public favour. But there have always, too, been people, lurking in the background ready to wreck his political career.
Once Archer said that when he was three he wanted to be four, and when he was four he wanted to be Prime Minister. But the summit of his political achievements has been to become briefly a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
In 1969 he won a resounding by-election victory for the Tories at Louth to become, at 29, Britain's youngest MP. He had made a fortune from his business and was about to forge a glittering political career when he was caught up in the collapse of Aquablast, a fraudulent Canadian industrial cleaning company. In an attempt to recoup some money he wrote a novel, drawing on that disaster. The result, Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, was an instant bestseller and launched him on a new path to fame and riches as a writer.