Ian G. Cutler literally invented stories about Amin. "My time In Uganda: Over a period of several years, both before and during the regime of Idi Amin, I had some kind of devious business relationship with the government and made several business trips out there.
Planning one of those trips, I saw the opportunity to have all my expenses paid for by the News of the World and persuaded Michael Parker (of the Gay YMCA story) and Gerry Brown, to help me get sponsored. We sold the story on a simple brief to “expose the horrors of living under Amin”. We used the airport at Nairobi, Kenya. This involved us in a 300 mile drive. We would often break our journey in a Kenyan town called Kisumu. As soon as we got to Kampala we used to set ourselves up in the only five star hotel that was still open for business. On the first of these trips I took Parker with me. We went direct to the hotel bar, where, over copious amounts of whatever spirits were served in the country, we created a scene of gruesome carnage, As the booze went down, Parker wrote: 'The sky is clouded with vultures as unburied bodies pile up in the streets of the beleaguered capital'. The next morning we decided to go and find a ‘dead body’, and actually went out for the first time into Kampala’s surprisingly civilized streets, where we eventually happened upon a drunk. He was laying prostrate on the pavement so I exposed a whole roll of film - omitting the bit where the drunk suddenly recovered and lurched off to the nearest bar. This was’ the drunk’ referred to in 'Vultures of Uganda' story - supposedly a dying man! Rupert laughed at this picture. Apart from that, we rarely left the confine of the hotel, and only came back to London when our expenses were being questioned. For once the News of the World didn’t believe us. Upon our return we went off on a boozy bout with our old mate Craig McKenzie, to whom we confided all. Naturally we ended up in our favourite brothel, the Cabaret Club. There, presumably in his cups, McKenzie agreed to try and persuade his brother, then riding high as editor of the Sun, to run the story. On Craig’s assurance that the story held up, Kelvin did so and we two conmen walked away with handsome cheques. On my next trip I took Gerry Runcible Brown to do the ‘real’ story. Adjective-laden artistic license, we decided, was just not enough. We would have to find some convincing horror stories. And, of course, so we did. Gerry was a quite remarkable man. For a start, his drinking capacity was such that he completely humbles lightweight dipsomaniacs like Scallywag. He has been known, while ‘on the job’, to consume up to two or even three bottles of scotch a session while concocting his expenses for a seemingly ever-tolerant ‘Screws’ hierarchy. Even more incredible was his capacity to get his end away with whatever p..... was available, even while surrounded by the sordid evidence of the empty bottles of his wretched debauchery. But there is something even more unimaginable and inconceivable, even preposterous, about the Runcible Super-loo which very, very nearly defies all rational and sagacious thinking. It is that, despite overwhelming evidence of his life-long depravity, he was actually taken seriously by his peers. Gerry-can has written and published a book called “EXPOSED - Sensational True Story of Fleet Street Reporter” in which he not only pontificates about the glories of exposure journalism (with shining white armour gallivanting valiantly as the Great Crusader against universal sleaze) but tried to set himself up as the authentic mouthpiece of the exposure genre. Indeed, so well-established as a spokesman of “freedom of speech” has he become that he was lauded in the Guardian by the editor-in-chief, Peter Preston no less, for his tenacious belief that if others are at it, it is up to Galahads like himself to tell the world about it. But there was no one to tell the world about Gerald Runcible Brown or about just what he actually got up to when he took his trousers down, until now, So here I am, a veteran snatch-man, ex-con, s... athlete (I have scr...... a thousand women in my sordid life) and self-confessed manipulator of the front page. I am here to re-write the Gerry-can memoirs. Take for example, our different accounts of our trip to Uganda together. I had been there several times before. This particular visit occurred just after Idi Amin had been ousted by the Tanzanian army. According to Gerry's book, ‘Exposed’, Gerry-can, at the time a fearless freelance who wanted to put the world to rights, decided to go Uganda and took along “my photographer”. The fact is that I pay-rolled the whole trip to nearly a thousand pounds. I took him and picked up all the tabs. In fact at the time Gerry had a warrant out for his arrest. He had fled from Florida where he had been working for the notorious National Enquirer. It was, although the book skilfully doesn’t mention it, just a little bit of a hurricane, something to do with serious driving offences while trying to escape with dodgy credit cards. I knew we had to find something to take back to make the trip worthwhile. Gerry just got pissed and went along with the completely concocted fantasies. Everything that the Daily Mirror eventually published was invented in a haze of alcohol while we were, in reality, shagging everything in sight, black and white. The truth of the matter is that at the time fearless Gerry-can was so completely drunk he did not know he was in Uganda. One morning, in a town called Kisumu, just over the Kenyan border, I went to wake him from his stupors in a brothel and found the intrepid hack completely covered in a mysterious black slime which looked like sick but had obviously emanated from the private parts of the whore. It was quite incredible. When I pointed out to him that he was completely covered all over with his strange black spew he leapt out of bed thinking he had DT’s. He tore his clothes off and ran screaming in a berserk fashion around the room. He threw all the sodden clothes into a corner and, completely demented and naked, he dived out into the street and found a nearby tap to wash himself off. When we had a post mortem on just what had afflicted him and asked an experienced Save the Children Fund worker, we were told that the whores in the town regularly went to a crack witch doctor before business each day. Apparently he concocted a brew of fried bat which he made into a sort of sickly porridge. The whores stuffed this up their fannies before sex to save them from VD and pregnancy. It was supposed to make their fannies smaller so, hopefully, making their clients’ sex more enjoyable. Frank and fearless Gerry-can’s later highly accredited account of his daring and dashing visit to Kisumu, claimed he was dodging bullets from way-ward drunk Tanzanian troops who were raping and looting at will. As the sweat poured down his valiant brow he was ducking and diving wayward machine gun fire and, in the name of Queen, country, and his expense account, bringing home to millions of readers the ‘real truth’ about Amin’s despotism. Anyway, after our intrepid and daring hero had washed off the bat-spew, he naturally needed a drink to settle his nerves. This consisted of a full bottle of Johnny Walker before he decided he was fit enough to face the rest of his highly dangerous assignment. Ironically this is the man who both the Evening Standard and the Guardian has called upon to crusade for “Freedom of Speech in the British Press”. In the words of Guardian editor-in-chief, Peter Preston, who reviewed Brown's book “It’s the persona, the self-image that strikes you first: though, ripely humorous, lovable tacky, George Cole plays Robin Hood. Golden-hearted Gerry warns Frank Bough, the second time round, to stick to the straight and narrow…. But the other thing about Gerry Brown is his ferocious professionalism… the work is utterly painstaking… Brown puts the hours in as doggedly as any journalist around.” Amin’s Crazy Nuclear Plot was a Fantasy - Worse was to come. The intrepid Gerry, while propped up in a bar, managed to expose Amin’s plans to build an atomic bomb to take over the world. He would have people believe that he heroically penetrated, single-handed against vast odds, Amin’s former Ministry of the Interior and looted the incredible plans of Amin’s plot to ‘Nuke’ the world. This was, of course, on top of his complete fantasy, concocted the day before in the same bar, that Idi was a cannibal who kept the heads of his victims in a freezer. We spent a month in Uganda investigating Amin’s fallen regime. Not content with the real story, Gerry Brown and I falsified a story for the Daily Mirror, which ran for four days in May 1979. The false story claimed that Amin was planning a nuclear coup with the help of IRA and Palestinian terrorists; and that he was also organizing a world drug ring. None of this was true of course. The codename given to the nuclear plot, Operation Poker, was a fake name fabricated by me. Gerry Brown went on to cash in on this story even further when he wrote his book about it. According to Brown's book, “there was a file cover marked ‘Operation Poker’, written by one of Amin’s insane policy advisors about how to acquire nuclear weapons and blackmail the rest of Africa and all of Europe.” The truth is that we were in the bar and Gerry was completely drunk. We found some totally innocuous photo-stats of nothing in particular and I wrote “Top Secret” on the top and then, in biro, using the bar itself as a desk, I wrote “Operation Poker.” I then photographed these documents as ‘evidence’. But, in reality, we completely invented the whole scam. I rather resent being called ‘one of Amin’s insane policy advisors’ but Gerry at the time was so far gone on the scotch that he probably truly believed it may even have happened. We then went out to photograph two suitable buildings which might conceal both a nuclear reactor and a freezer and then invented the most incredible ‘eye witness’ reports of these atrocities. This time neither the News of the World, nor the Sun, would countenance the story. They were both owned by Murdoch. However the feature ended up as a five-part series in the rival paper, the Daily Mirror. We filled the paper each day with tales of plans for nuclear bombs, drugs, sex orgies, high living, torture and depravity. Me at the frontline by an overturned tank Nevertheless I did do some real work while in Uganda. I even ventured down to the front line a couple of times but not while there was any fighting going on of course. Didn't want to get my shoes dirty. On one occasion I met these three boys, retreating from the war, and I got them to pose with their guns. Idi Amin’s retreating 'Army'. I would usually stay at the same hotel as the generals and would talk to them and get their stories but to be honest I was more interested in the cunt, not just black birds but white reporters too. I had a great time. 'Major' Bob Astles (born 1924) is a former British soldier and colonial officer who lived in Uganda and became an associate of presidents Milton Obote and Idi Amin. In 1975, Astles joined Idi Amin's service, becoming the head of the anti-corruption squad and advising the president on British affairs. He also presided over an aviation service that transported members of the government. Astles later said 'I kept my eyes shut, I said nothing about what I saw, which is what they liked'. 'Major' Bob Astles, Amin’s right-hand man. What Astles did or did not do during Amin's brutal tenure is a matter of conjecture. He was feared, and considered by many to be a malignant influence on the dictator. Others thought he was a moderating presence. He came to be known as 'Major' Bob (the title of Major was given to him by Amin) or 'the White Rat'. Following the Uganda-Tanzania War which led to the demise of Amin's regime in 1979, Astles fled to Kenya, but was brought back to Uganda to face criminal charges. He was imprisoned for his alleged association with Amin's security apparatus, and was charged with everything from murder and corruption to theft. I knew Astles well and gave a character reference at his trial. Though acquitted, he remained in Luzira Prison for over six years. Upon his eventual release in 1985 he returned to Britain." Hussein Juruga Lumumba Amin Kampala, Uganda _______________________________________________ WestNileNet mailing list WestNileNet@kym.net http://orion.kym.net/mailman/listinfo/westnilenet WestNileNet is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. _______________________________________________
