Paddy Ashdown

21/05/2009

Lord and former Lib Dem leader tells us about his tearaway years

I wish I’d listened to my early teachers more. I was a bit of a tearaway.  My interests were rugby and athletics, being free of the irksome discipline of a public school, and the girls from the local high school. My schooling did not go well – I found classrooms a bore and teachers extremely dull. I didn’t send my own kids to a public school.

I can still remember with some pain the look of disappointment on my father’s face when he read my school reports. He paid a lot for our education and I admired and loved him very much. One of the driving forces of my life has been continuing to do things that would make him feel proud. I love my mother very much too but she gave us love and my father gave us challenges and adventures and pleasing him or doing things that would earn his approval are still immensely important to me now.  He’s a constant voice in my head.

I’d warn my young self what little time he would have with his parents, so that he could value it more. From the age of 11 until they died I probably saw my parents a total of about 2 years because I saw them very little during my school years and then they left the country when I was 18. My father died in my study, the study I now work in. My wife and I nursed him right through to his death.

At 16 I did lie awake at night worrying because I knew my parents’ business was going down the pan. I felt very very upset about that. Financial security has always been as issue with me ever since.

As a teenager I knew what I was destined to do. At the age of 4 I apparently declared that I wanted to go into the navy. As it was I went into the marines, having taken a naval scholarship at 16.

I would tell my younger self to stick with the piano! I gave it up because I found it very boring and I wish I hadn’t done because I love music and I’d love to be able to play it myself now.

I wish I’d joined Help for Heroes when they asked me after I came back from Bosnia (Paddy was High representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006). I was inundated with requests at that time and  I had to say no 9 times out of 10 and I had to say not to them.  I wish I hadn’t done that. It’s become a very important organisation helping servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’d tell my young self never to forget when you talk to the media, you’re really talking to the world outside the media and people value straight talking. That’s why they like Vince Cable. Ordinary people want to hear the truth, they’re fed up with politicians who try all the time to pull the wool over their eyes. There are plenty of times I wish I’d played the media differently but if you’ll forgive me, while I’m far too long in the tooth not to have made lots of mistakes, I’m far too experienced to tell you what they are.

I probably got the Iraq war wrong. I thought it was right to fight that war and it probably wasn’t.

Interview: Jane Graham