I am convinced about it. Jeffrey Archer is not real. He is his own fiction in flesh and blood. Suave and charming he is; subtle he is not. He is here to soak in the adulation and soaking he is, his grin cheshire-cattish. “Were you at Landmark (where there was a meet-the-author event) yesterday?” he quizzes, leaning right into my face, his lively eyes boring into mine. Well, I wasn’t. So he informs me in a conspiratorial whisper: “Thousand and odd people, all jammed into one room...” If he is surprised at the extent of his popularity in India, he is masking it well under the avalanche of public appearances, book signings and media interviews.

On his first-ever six-city whirlwind tour of India to plug his latest bestseller, Bangalore was one of his last stops and I was one of the last to meet him and my only worry was that he would sleep through the interview, perhaps his 312th. Nothing of the sort happened. Everything about the lordship is about effect. He has a quiver full of punchy answers; his body language is ‘speak to me’ and his darting eyes and stagey mannerisms are an interviewer’s dream come true.

As we settle down for a chat I ask him if he has seen the pirated versions of  ‘A Prisoner of Birth’ selling on Bangalore pavements. “No!” He sits up. “But I am thoroughly flattered!” I was expecting him to bristle about piracy and perhaps that expectation showed on my face. “I feel bad about the publishers though,” he adds, as a very delayed afterthought. Considering that a quarter of hits on his website are from India and Indian readers simply love their Archers, will he allow his books to be turned into Bollywood scripts? This time, he bristles. “No way! I heard that ‘Kane and Abel’ has already been turned into a film without my permission. I am going back to London and scouring Brick Lane for a copy of that movie. If I get it, I will sue them!” he thunders. I can almost hear his hands go rub! rub! in glee. Uttering a silent prayer for the makers of the 80s film Khudgarz, I abandon the topic and jump to ‘A Prisoner of Birth’. It is a theme that runs through most of his books — many of his lead characters from Abel Rosnovski to Captain Armstrong to Danny Cartwright — are all prisoners of their birth. Is he one too? “We are all. Some rise above their birth but that is very difficult. The girl who tapped at my car window at the traffic signal might be as talented as I am but she is a prisoner of her birth.”

Prisoner of birth he might be but controversy’s child he has always been. From being accused of taking paybacks from money collected for charity to having gone nearly bankrupt due to bad investments in early seventies to being found guilty of perjury and sentenced to four years of prison (of which he served two), the facts of Archer’s life have been one up on his fiction. If there is one lesson he has learnt from his life, what would that be? “Lesson? I would rather acknowledge how privileged and fortunate I have been.” I persist. “One lesson? There is really only one lesson in life. Only hard, very hard work, takes you anywhere. Talent plus no energy equals pauper; talent plus energy equals winner.” Write it down, he commands and I duly do so. Archer believes he has a God-given gift for storytelling but says that’s not enough. He is a very disciplined writer, he says. When he is writing a new novel, he usually takes two years, of which the first year is devoted to research. The second year, he sits down to write and generally takes 1,000 hours to do so. “I wrote eight hours a day for ‘A Prisoner of Birth’.” “17 drafts,” he adds in a staccato.

So does he think all good writers can become novelists? “Pah! That’s rubbish. Telling a story is not good writing alone. Telling a story is a gift. At this very moment, I can turn our conversation into a gripping story. Can you?” His voice suddenly dips and he shifts to the edge of the seat. “I sat next to one of your best-selling novelists the other day. She is glamourous and she is a good writer. But she can’t tell a story!” He then leans back and smirks. I can’t help but grin.

I venture to ask him about the time he spent in prison, which is ironically, turning out to be a blessing to the author who has churned out two prison diaries and one novel already! Would he describe his prison days as the darkest hours of his life? He thinks for a while. “No. I have a friend who is 66 and has just become bankrupt; another friend who is dying slowly of cancer. You have to put your life in perspective. They were tough times but there are tougher things in the world than being locked up.” Has he got any prison friends? “He points out to the dedication in ‘A Prisoner of Birth’. “Those are the only two people from prison that I am still in touch with.”

His way of keeping in touch is flamboyant, just like his persona. The shepherd pie and Krug parties that he throws for his privileged friends at his penthouse overlooking the Thames in London are legendary. Does he still throw such parties, post-prison stay? “Yes of course I do! Every Christmas! I remember your dour Faroukh Engineer attending it once and commenting that I am the ‘natural captain’ of the English cricket team!”
Natural captain or not is debatable but natural entertainer he sure is. In life as well as in fiction.