Jeffrey Archer - The Nearly Man

Jeffrey Archer has a very wide range of talents: athlete, auctioneer, charity fund raiser, PE teacher, politician, celebrity (loved in Immingham, apparently), actor, convict and, of course, author. The Beetles visited Brasenose College, Oxford at his invitation in 1964 and Ringo Star is quoted as saying  'He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it.'
Jeffrey Archer's original motivation for becoming an author was to repay massive debts of over £400,000 after investing in a company called Aquablast in 1974. His first novel, "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" was the success he needed to avoid bankruptcy. No one can deny him his story telling talent, he is always a good, if not demanding, read.
Archer, however, is the nearly man. His web site claims he ran 100 yards in 9.6 seconds in 1966; that's nearly the same as Usain Bolt dramatically breaking the 9.6 second barrier for 100 meters in Berlin in 2009. Archer nearly went to Wellington College (actually he went to Wellington School) and nearly went to Oxford, but with only three O'levels when he left school; it is true he did get a teaching qualification at Brasenose as a mature student. He was nearly prosecuted for insider trading when he made £77,000 profit on shares in Anglia Television, purchased for a friend and just before its takeover by MAI, whilst his wife was a director. He nearly got away with falsely suing the Daily Star for reporting that he slept with prostitute Monica Coghlan and we were all nearly convinced that he raised £57 million in his Simple Truth campaign for the Kurds although they received only about £250,000. John Major was convinced enough to recommend him for his peerage.
It is ironic, then, that Archer's novel "Paths of Glory" is based on the true story of George Mallory, who, along with Andrew Irvine, nearly got to the top of Everest in 1924; his body was discovered in 1999, only a few hundred meters from the summit. Mallory and Irvine may have preceded Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in reaching the summit by nearly 30 years; we will probably never know. There is a touching parallel here between Mallory and Archer; both gaining schooling by scholarship, both aspiring to climb to greater heights, be they social or mountainous. Both maybe not recognised for their true achievements. The story is embellished with minor conflicts about class and establishment behaviour, but fails to address the real passion of the mountaineer. Mallory is of course credited with the famous three word explanation for why you should climb a mountain: "because it's there."