Public relations executive who worked as a close adviser to Margaret Thatcher and claimed that he came up with the ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ slogan

Tim Bell, Lord Bell, the advertising and public relations executive, who has died aged 77, was the man who claimed to have come up with the slogan “Labour Isn’t Working” that helped Margaret Thatcher win the 1979 general election. He went on to be one of her closest advisers for the rest of her life, and announced her death in April 2013. “I loved her,” he admitted in his ghostwritten memoirs Right or Wrong, published the following year. “I am a hero-worshipper. I work for my demi-gods.”

In her memoirs, Thatcher claimed that Bell had better political antennae than most politicians: “He could pick up quicker than anyone else a change in the national mood. And, unlike most advertising men, he understood that selling ideas is different from selling soap.”

Bell it was who, along with Gordon Reece, advised Thatcher on interview technique, what clothes to wear and even her hairstyle, and spent Christmases at Chequers when she was prime minister. “She changed my life completely. She used to think I was in touch with ordinary folk. God knows why.”

Indeed. For while Bell was the sort of man who appealed to her as a courtier, smooth, blunt and with the looks of a 1950s British cinema leading man, he really had little congruence with ordinary people, despite having been born in suburban north London and educated at a state grammar school. Hard drinking, heavy on the expenses, an 80-a-day smoker, living in Belgravia, his was a life of backstage whispers and casual amorality in business. “The only talent I have is charm,” he admitted to Campaign magazine in 2014.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Bell with Margaret Thatcher in 2002. In her memoirs she wrote that Bell had better political antennae than most politicians. Photograph: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock

His career ended in ignominy when Bell Pottinger, the company he had founded and run for 28 years, was closed down in 2017, having been found to have breached ethical principles after an independent inquiry into its business dealings in South Africa.

Bell was born in Southgate, the son of Arthur Bell, a salesman from Belfast, who abandoned his Australian-born wife Greta (nee Findlay) and emigrated to South Africa when his son was five. She subsequently married Peter Pettit, a solicitor, who became the Conservative mayor of Marylebone in 1961. Bell was educated at Queen Elizabeth grammar school, Barnet, but left at 17 to become a messenger in the postroom at ABC Television.

He had apparently thought of becoming a teacher, but subsequently claimed in the Daily Telegraph in 2015 that he had decided against the profession because of its “lazy, whingeing, Guardian-obsessed staff rooms”. Instead, he worked his way through a series of jobs in advertising agencies before joining the brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi, who in 1970 were starting their own advertising agency.

It was a hard-driving upstart in the industry, hustling for business with a contempt for the larger, longer-established companies. Bell fitted right in. Known to some, though not to Maurice or Charles, as the third brother, he became unofficial managing director, building contacts with national newspaper editors and smoothing over internal rows. In 1979, when the Saatchis won the Tory account for the forthcoming election, it was Bell who was deputed to liaise with Thatcher.

Although James Callaghan’s Labour government was faltering anyway, the agency’s aggressive campaign probably helped to tip the balance, especially with the poster campaign showing a long line of unemployed claimants – really Conservative party volunteers recruited for the occasion.

Bell claimed credit for the campaign, though others at Saatchi and Saatchi devised the poster. Thatcher apparently had to be convinced that the slogan Labour Isn’t Working would be effective since it named the Tories’ opponents in larger type than theirs. One of Bell’s tasks, then and subsequently, was to steer her away from some of her more naive suggestions.

He remained as an unofficial adviser throughout Thatcher’s term in office, calling in for late-night drinks. In 1984 he was seconded to the National Coal Board to advise on presentation during the miners’ strike, though he had only limited success with its brusque and awkward Scottish-American chairman Sir Ian MacGregor.

A motto that appealed to Bell was: “Why tell the truth when a lie will do?” He said in his memoirs: “I am a moral man (but) there were many times when I would adopt the same philosophy.” He added that he “retrofitted” facts: “We could in those days find statistics that proved anything … you could argue we were always trying to stretch the truth, but then everybody was at the time.” When a subsequent Tory chairman, Chris Patten, queried the veracity of a claim, Bell’s retort was: “We’re not saying it’s true, we are saying it could be true.”

Bell left the Saatchis in 1985 to co-found his own public relations agency, Lowe Howard-Spink and Bell, which became Bell Pottinger three years later and was subsumed in 1994 into Chime Communications, of which he became chairman. Bell Pottinger became well-known for its willingness to represent rightwing figures and regimes, using the excuse that everyone deserved representation.

Among its clients were the Pinochet regime, Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, Asma al-Assad, wife of the Syrian dictator, the Sultan of Brunei and the Sri Lankan government during its war with the Tamils.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Bell with the journalist and broadcaster Michael Cockerell in 1999. Photograph: Richard Kendal/BBC

Domestically it represented the Tory minister David Mellor during his extramarital affair, the businessman Ernest Saunders, convicted of manipulating Guinness shares during a takeover battle, Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, Rebekah Wade, the Murdoch executive during the phone hacking scandal, and Neil Hamilton in his battle with the Guardian over the cash for questions scandal. The agency lobbied on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government during the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into bribery allegations over the Al Yamamah arms deal, an inquiry that was subsequently dropped.

“Contrary to the illusion people have, I would not represent Saddam Hussein or Hitler,” Bell told the Telegraph in 2015, adding that he would never represent the Labour party either. “I have represented people who are thought to be evil, but I only represent them because they promised me they were going to stop being evil and when they carried on being evil, I walked away.” The agency declined to represent Robert Mugabe over a financial transaction, but only because he did not take their advice.

In 2012, Bell and his associate James Henderson bought out Chime’s controlling interest, though the company retained a 25% share. However, the pair soon fell out over strategy and Bell left in August 2016.

Within a year Bell Pottinger became embroiled in a crisis involving its South African subsidiary which was shown to have run a campaign for the Indian Gupta brothers, who had controversial business ties to the country’s government.

The campaign, with its racist attack on “white monopoly capital” opponents, outraged other agency clients including the businessman Johann Rupert, who complained. The crisis deepened when Bell was shown to have sat in on the discussions about taking on the business, sending an enthusiastic email back to London predicting a lucrative deal.

As clients deserted Bell Pottinger across the world, Bell’s excuse that he had actually opposed the deal rang hollow, particularly when he appeared on Newsnight to defend himself against the constant sound of his mobile phone going off – an elementary gaffe for a supposed PR guru. The company folded within days.

Bell suffered from ill health, the result of his chain smoking for many years, including cancer and diabetes. He had a triple heart bypass operation in 2001. He was knighted by Thatcher in 1991 after she left office and was ennobled by Tony Blair in 1998, despite his antipathy to the Labour leader.

“I have led a charmed life,” he told the Mail on Sunday in 2017. “I want to be the sort of person who walks into a restaurant and people say, isn’t that so-and-so? It’s insecurity, not vanity.”

Bell was married three times, once briefly in his 20s, then subsequently in 1988 to Virginia Hornbrook, with whom he had two children, Daisy and Harry. That marriage was dissolved in 2016 and the following year he married Jacky Phillips.

• Timothy John Leigh Bell, Lord Bell, public relations consultant and media strategy adviser, born 18 October 1941; died 25 August 2019