“I prefer fact to fiction.”

Based on an interview with Martin Chambers (2017)

To be honest with you, I hadn’t even bothered looking for the diaries ‘til Helen put Attenborough on to them for his bloody film.

I was in enough trouble already with Isabella over the house, the tapes and my intention to publish my own memoir. And that was even before Christopher turfed up on my doorstep.

It pains me to say it, but I think people have the idea that I am a schemey person, and that I knew exactly where the diaries were. I really didn’t though. I knew Peter kept a diary, but I thought it was just him logging appointments and listing any famous people he’d met. The kind of diary I would write, I suppose, if I could be bothered.

When Attenborough’s people started calling me about buying the rights I didn’t really know what they were talking about. Not very astute of me as a so-called agent, I grant you. But I wasn’t really an agent by then, was I? Isabella was managing the estate. All I had was the house and the tapes.

I certainly had no other clients at the time. I’d been totally owned by Peter if you want the truth of it. Sure, I did end up managing the interests of Duran Duran for a while - the band that is, not the people. All that meant was going to a meeting once a quarter with all the other agents and lawyers who represented the individual members of the band, and trying to ensure it didn’t always collapse into a total shit fight. (It always did). It wasn’t a proper job.

By ‘94, I was just so rusty – worn out - and I was thinking mainly of how to engineer a comfortable retirement or perhaps cobble together enough resources to buy a flower shop or maybe an antiques store somewhere cosy up North – Christ I wasn’t even forty!

Quite why Helen felt she had any right to those bloody diaries I will never know. I suspect she’d overstated her role in the whole thing to Attenborough, probably over some fancy dinner in London. And then she didn’t want to look stupid.

I’d seen her many a time at Attenborough premieres, hanging on to him for dear life - aware maybe that Shirley Maclaine or Princess Di were always going to push her down the pecking order eventually. Maybe she was trying to pull rank on Izzy too. I can imagine it tickled her a bit to see Isabella embarrassed about the whereabouts of such a key part of the Peter Shure estate.

Isabella just assumed I’d be lying about everything by that point. She’d sent legal bods round to the house twice by that time with some bogus warrant to seize Peter’s belongings. Or to put it the proper way - *my* belongings. I think she had some fantasy that there was a treasure-trove of papers, home movies, letters, photographs, memorabilia that she’d be able to parlay into something big for herself. Another misery memoir or a made-for-TV movie.

Hark at me. I was doing the same thing. We were all like jackals barking and scraping over the remains of a lion. It embarrasses me when I think of it now.

Anyway, I put my agent head on pretty quick and saw off Attenborough. His people tried to scare me by saying they could just as easily go off and buy Hemingway’s war memories rather than Peter’s. So I told them to eff off and do it!

Meanwhile, Isabella started her campaign for the ‘seizure’ of the bloody diaries and Helen kept trying to say they were hers. It went on for months. There was even a moment when I thought maybe I could hire a ghost writer and simply fake them in some way just to get everyone off my back. I’m bloody glad I didn’t do that.

When they finally surfaced in ‘96 - thanks to Chris, I guess you’d have to say – it was clear they were indeed something of a treasure-trove. But I’d had enough by then. I was ready to sell the house, take my book money and run. I’d certainly had enough of the Shures. All I wanted was a little place of my own, a nice little shop to run, and no more talk ever again of bloody show business.