Peter Gammons: Fun of a Preacher Man
UKIP London mayoral candidate Peter Gammons spent the last stretch of the campaign pootling around Greater London in a black cab covered in decals. BLACK CABS MATTER it announced on the back. One rest stop was at a pub in Ham: “What irony?” Tweeted Gammons.
I meet him in the totally different surroundings of Leicester Square, which takes him back to fun nights in the 1980s with his friend Peter Stringfellow, and in particular the launch of Gammons' record On The Beach in 1988 with events at the Empire, the Hippodrome and Xenon nightclub. He’s dressed in celebrity black, he has a mask exemption card on a lanyard, and he skips from foot to foot as the only busker around entertains a passing group of girls. He’s very much the performer. He has with him a plastic sleeve containing background info ranging from wartime photographs of the deep-level shelter at Clapham South Tube, where he proposes secure temporary accommodation for the homeless, to a snap of himself with Katy Perry. His dining companion, a Tory MP (long-time friend rather than high-stakes defector) has come along early and has to wait.
He only joined UKIP two and a half to three years ago, assuring me both that the party today is moderate and that he is “very much of a centrist politically” (though he later complains about the London mayoral line-up that “there isn't anybody right of Karl Marx running”). He spoke at the 2019 conference when then-leader Richard Braine didn’t even turn up, but that didn’t matter, he says: what struck him was that, unlike the Brexit Party, “this party revolves around a manifesto not around people and I liked that”. A UKIP National Executive Committee member encouraged him to stand for Mayor.
He was born on a council estate in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, where his parents were one of the last families who could afford a car. The sense of freedom this gave the family seems to motivate his passion about Sadiq Khan’s transport policies and the plight of motorists on modest incomes.
Taken to an Englebert Humperdinck concert as a young boy, he apparently told his mother that that was what he wanted to do when he grew up. Aged 8 and 10, he won talent contests in Great Yarmouth. As an aspiring singer, he toured with acts including reggae band Amazulu; On the Beach features a cameo from Cliff Richard, who he knew as a neighbour at the time. It earned some critical acclaim, coming 18th in a DJs’ ranking of all-time dance records in Jocks magazine, but Chris Rea’s re-release of his 1986 track also called On the Beach the same summer was the bigger hit with the public. At around this time, Gammons says he won a gold disc of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up at the DMC Awards, as a booby ‘Worst Decision anyone made since a record company turned down the Beatles’ prize for passing up the opportunity to audition for songwriter/producers Stock Aitken Waterman. It hangs on his bathroom wall.
Instead of pop stardom, Gammons pursued a career in preaching, which had begun with a stint working for veteran Cornish evangelist Don Double. He earned a doctorate (one of the three that he says he holds) at a seminary near Lahore and worked with charities and church organisations there to support persecuted Pakistani Christians. “I had gunmen shoot at me – I thrived on danger. I was passionate to help these people,” he says. He has since spoken from stages including Sambadromes in Brazil, the Quirino Grandstand in Manila and London’s major concert and exhibition spaces.
He is, quite possibly, bigger than the Pope – the estimated 4 million crowd at the biggest El Shaddei Catholic charismatic movement gathering he addressed in the Philippines in the 1990s look more densely packed in photographs than those for Pope Francis's 2015 Mass on the same site, he says. Pre-pandemic he did two or three massive events a year – “very happy events, very lively. I usually decide on the day of the event what I'm going to speak on”. Reaching out across ethnic and confessional divides (he spoke to Protestant gatherings in the Philippines before getting involved with El Shaddei), his style is about uplifting people and encouraging them to chase their dreams. "I'm not telling people how to live their lives," and “I’m not into religion that makes people feel bad” he says. Indeed in several conservations, he doesn’t once talk about God.
Former Philippines First Lady and congresswoman Imelda Marcos. Credit: Lauren Greenfield
Gammons' globetrotting has brought him audiences with world leaders, to whom he has offered spiritual and temporal advice and sometimes become close. He counts three Presidents of The Philippines, plus Imelda Marcos, as friends. The 91 year old Marcos asked him to write her life story, he says. “She became a very close friend. I had dinner with her every night for three months. I almost finished it, I just never got round to publishing it". If the book does see the light of day, it will join almost 100 others that Gammons has authored.
After Gammons addressed a business conference in Honduras, he says President Manuel Zelaya summoned him to help end a teachers’ strike. Having “stood and passionately talked about the future of Honduras children” for 15 minutes, the teachers were apparently so moved they agreed to end their months-long action. He says he told Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning while in opposition five things he should do to be re-elected, which did the trick for Manning. He caveats portrayals that he’s a miracle worker, however – “I’ve never claimed to have healing powers, I just believe in prayer”. World leaders approach him “because they know I'm sincere, I care about people and I have solutions. I've always been a problem solver, unless it's my own problems,” he quips.
He lived in Las Vegas for a period around 2013, and more recently has been spending a few months of each year in Florida, where two of his four children live. Among celebrities he has been pictured smiling with are Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears. A website with elements of his life story was set up by a more IT-savvy friend, Gammons says, at a time during the pandemic he worried that because of his health conditions, he might not see family members again. He says the website is broadly true but may not be completely accurate, since the friend was writing it off the top of their head.
He is Lord Peter John Gammons on his driving licence, after his mother bought him as a present the Lordship of the Manor of Wennington, a title that goes back to the 12th century. He's not a fan of the Upper Chamber. "If there's any fake Lordships that have bought it, they're in the House of Lords," he says.
If he gets to City Hall, he would scrap the Ultra-Low Emission Zone extension and “hated bicycle lanes,” and across the board would like to see penalties for drivers replaced by incentives for greener vehicles. He calls for “police substations in every community” to make officers more accessible, wants young people from across the UK to come to London to plant a tree, and backs a London Lottery to fund projects and enable him to cut the GLA council tax precept.
He’s hazy on the details of how he would fund initiatives, and generally about some of his more out-there proposals such as an underground pod transport system, inspired by finding out about unused tunnels under London – “2 million miles,” he read in one piece. “Honest to God I didn't know anything about this, maybe if I read more or watched TV I would know”. The important thing is that he’s an ideas person. “Every time, I have solutions – some of them may be a little wild. All the ideas I've come up with, I'm confident someone will use them”. Why is he standing? Because “London is a mess”, and also because “when they asked me to run for Mayor, I thought well it's one of the only things I haven't done so let's do that. I want to get to the end of my life and laugh and smile.”