Book Review: Dead on Time - How Barry George Executed Jill Dando (Blake, 2003)

This is a fascinating and gripping account of the Jill Dando murder by John McVicar, former gangster and now self-made freelance journalist and television dial-a-pundit.

His account of the murder and trial may be questionable but what McVicar does is to throw open the viper’s nest that is journalism in modern-day London. It is a truly eye-opening and fascinating story. McVicar is the Steve Irwin of journalists – street-wise, highly competent at his trade, yet liable to suffer the slings and arrows of a stingray at any moment (in the shape of McNamara of the Met, Al Fayed or Campbell, the detective-in-charge).

This book is the All the President's Men (Woodward & Bernstein) of murder books - it is intricate in its account of how journalism works. Alright, we're talking about a brutal murder, but only of a dumb, girl-next-door type who happened to have a successful TV career. Incidentally, one who started out (after the Weston Mercury) at Radio Devon up at St Davids Hill, in Exeter. Spookily, she may well have been working at BBC Radio Devon just when I was 19, working at EBC Group Plc at Marwood House, St Davids Hill, bang opposite.

He sets out his initial theories on who killed Jill Dando, as written up in his column in Punch magazine. He points out the pathetic mistakes of the early investigation, such as not following up the only witnesses at the scene of the crime, Richard Hughes next door at number 31 Gowan Avenue, and the other bloke, opposite).

They could have afforded the police a true description of the gunman, rather than the usual rubbish E-fit that they came up with. It's all a bit like the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, 20 years before, when they also became bogged down in their old-fashioned index card system, containing the names of thousands of suspects, only this time it's the HOLMES system. I worked for Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, here in Exeter, a few years ago, and, apart from the complexity of dealin with any database containing thousands of names, the police system is also antiquated, a sort of bespoke, MS-Dos system from the 1980s.

I like McVicar, not least because he has a cynical attitude to most things. I thought the Jill Dando-Diana media fairytale was a load of bollocks; so does McVicar. Let's face it - both were dumb blondes who knew how to play the media.

McVicar seems to be candid and honest in his account. He admits that he was misguided in targetting Hughes, the next door neighbour, and that his magazine conducted something of a witchhunt against him.

McVicar also is a consummately gifted writer, even employing lots of academic-style Latin phrases and so forth. The little apparantly irrelevant narratives thrown in - like the Finnish bird, Tiina - seem pointless. But it still makes for fascinating reading, like Philip Marlowe, or something. I particularly like his attention to detail, like when he describes Hughes and his avoiding drinking and smoking in their first meeting in the pub (when they decided he was a major suspect, after being put in the frame by Mr D, the Met insider).

I've only finished half the book, but am totally unconvinced about Barry George. He may have been just some oddball with a superstar complex who got out of his depth. Maybe it was the Serb connection after all. The particle theory - that the tiny grain of gunpowder/whatever in his Cecil Gee overcoat links him to the crime is total rubbish. What other evidence is there?