George Galloway: It's not easy being Gorgeous

George Galloway is embroiled in the mother of all libel battles. But the cigar-chomping rebel MP laughs in the face of disaster. Deborah Ross takes a ride in his Mercedes to hear why

I meet George Galloway - also known as Gorgeous George, of course, as well as Britain's biggest champion of the Arab world - at his office in the House of Commons. I'm not sure why, but by the time I arrive, which is mid-afternoon-ish, George and the photographer are engaged in a conversation about beards not being fashionable any more. "A hundred years ago every MP had one," George is saying. David Blunkett still has one, I say. "Yes, but he probably doesn't know he has one," George says.

George does not have a beard, but he does have a little silver moustache. "Emma Nicholson once told me," he says, "that kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt." Everyone else in the room - myself, the photographer, two of Galloway's staff, Yasmin and Rima - freezes in horror, largely because, I think, we had always hoped to get though life without ever having to hear "egg" and "moustache" in the same sentence. Who hasn't?

George isn't fazed, though. I don't think much ever fazes George. "I thought it might have been a come-on," he continues, "so I beat a hasty retreat." He'd quite like to be thought of as a bit of a sexy beast, I think. His favourite actor, it turns out, is Jack Nicholson, and there is this sense that he might model himself on Jack, a little.

Certainly, he chomps on his fat cigars in a very Hollywood sort of way. He is chomping on one now, but while this cigar, he says, is all very well, it's not as juicily fat as his favourite, "the Montecristo No 2; they're like torpedoes". But he's suspended his Montecristo habit for the time being. They're expensive, he says, and what with his upcoming libel battle against The Daily Telegraph, "I have to put money into my legal pot. My bill is already a quarter of a million pounds. Luckily, my lawyers have faith in me. They're not asking for it up front."

We're off to Walsall, where George is due to speak at 7.30pm at a meeting of Respect, the new lefty anti-war party he founded to contest the European elections. Rima - thirty-ish, Manchester-born, of Lebanese/ Syrian descent - is coming too. She's a rubbish map-reader, it turns out, but is very beautiful with glossy black corkscrew curls. "You should meet her mother," says George later. "Wow, what a looker!"

We walk down the corridor. Mike Gapes, the pro-Israel MP, is a near neighbour. Do they pass the time of day? "No," George replies. I try to work out who his mates are in the anti-war lot. Glenda Jackson? "A cold fish," he says, shiveringly. "To me, her finest role was in A Touch of Class. She was very loveable in that." So if she can act loveable, she should be able to act warm? "Exactly. I do admire her Joan of Arc-like integrity, though." Ken Livingstone? "I admire and respect him, but he's not an easy person to like." Robin Cook? "Of course, while we must welcome any sinner that repents, he prepared the ground for all that happened."

His best friends include Alan Milburn, Barbara Roche, John Reid and Margaret Hodge. OK, maybe not. "I used to regard them as Trots! Margaret was always known as Enver Hoxha, after the Albanian dictator: now she's like a member of the Royal Family, lecturing patronisingly all over the place." I suppose that, whatever you might think about George, you do have to admire him for not shifting when the wind did. However, he did once have ministerial ambitions: "I would have loved to have been Foreign Secretary." So maybe there is some frustration and bitterness here. Perhaps, even, it's not so much that he loves Iraq, or found good in Saddam - more that he hates New Labour so much that any enemy of theirs has to be a friend of his.

Out to his car, now, which is parked in the forecourt. It's a big navy Mercedes. But it's not new, he stresses, and "I've done 108,000 miles in it since September 11". So many speaking engagements, he's had time for little else. Not even Sex and the City. "My staff encouraged me to watch and I did begin to feel I knew the characters." Who did he fancy most? "Well, you'd want to marry Charlotte and you'd want to sleep with Samantha, wouldn't you?"

In your dreams, pal, I want to say, but of course I'm much too polite. "Nice car," I do say. "I always pay for my own petrol," he says. His combined salary as an MP and columnist for the Scottish edition of The Mail on Sunday amounts to £150,000 a year. He once, famously, interviewed Saddam for The Mail on Sunday. Saddam offered him a Quality Street, which he did not accept. "I'm not really a chocolate man. I'm more cakes and puddings. I like banoffee pie."

His other cars, by the way, include a Range Rover in Portugal, where he has a second home, and "a soft-top vintage Mercedes, which I bought with my libel winnings from Robert Maxwell. All my cars are third-hand. The only new car I've ever owned was a Lada. It was good. Never broke down once. Soviet engineering!"

Rima offers to drive, but George won't hear of it. "I don't feel as manly, somehow, being driven." George, 50, is not a big man. He's surprisingly small, in fact, but stockily powerful with stockily powerful thighs, now splayed on the driving seat. (That's another image you didn't want, I bet.) His jeans strain at the seams. They used to be black but are so old they're that strange green that old black things go. His jacket is positively shiny with age. I'm shocked. What happened to Gorgeous George of the chi-chi Kenzo suits? "I used to be much better dressed because I used to have more time to shop," he says. "I like Selfridges. I used to go there a couple of times a year, but for the last couple of years, with the war and the run-up to the war, I really haven't had time." Rima offers George a small white pillow. "Piles?" I ask, sympathetically. "My back," he replies, firmly.

The car comes to life with a soft purr. We move off, past the Houses of Parliament. "I like the House of Commons. I like it late at night. It's got a certain majesty about it. But at the same time I could turn my back on it easily enough." George was expelled from the Labour Party (he is now the independent MP for Glasgow Kelvin) last October for his extreme anti-war rhetoric.

Would he return, if invited? No, he says. "If the Labour Party were to undergo some convulsive change, then obviously I'd have to think about that. But just swapping Blair for Brown wouldn't be a convulsive change." How did it feel, I ask, to be expelled? "I wasn't surprised, but I was shocked. When they said the words, I did feel a stab. But I'm over it." Does anything ever faze him? "Calamity has hardened me and turned my mind to steel," he says. Poetic, I say. "Ho Chi Minh," he says.

George and calamity. Everywhere George goes, trouble follows, as sure as eggs are eggs (which is fine; just don't bring moustaches into it). The classic case was at War on Want, which he raised from an unknown outfit to a major charity. At the same time, he was accused of fiddling his expenses and philandering. While an independent auditor cleared him of dishonesty, he admitted to coming away from a business trip to Greece with "carnal knowledge" of another woman, despite being married at the time. Not a happy marriage, then? "I wouldn't have been having an affair if it had been a happy marriage." Pause. "Rima, are we taking the M6?"

He is always being libelled, too. "I've won - if that's the word - a quarter of a million pounds in libel damages over the years, but I can honestly tell you I'd rather the libels hadn't happened. I hate being hated, lashed, traduced." Why are you libelled so often? "That's what my lawyers would like to know." Most recently, he won £30,000 from The Times (for a Julie Burchill column that confused him with another MP altogether) and substantial undisclosed damages from the The Christian Science Monitor over a claim, based on what turned out to be forged documents, that he was paid £10m by Saddam to oppose the conflict in Iraq.

The forgeries, he says, are evidence of a dirty-tricks campaign. "If you'd been at any of the anti-war demonstrations you'd know that I'm the main speaker, am always the final speaker and always get the best response." That's modest of you, George. "Those are facts." His libel case against the Telegraph involving another set of documents - this time purporting to show that he had been receiving £375,000 a year from the Iraqi government - is due in court in November. He is impenetrably confident - but what, I ask, if it does go against him? He'll be finished, politically and financially. "If the worst comes to the worst," he says, "I'll go up a hill and read a book. I know I've done nothing to be ashamed of."

We're purring up the Edgware Road now... Born and brought up in Dundee, his father worked in an engineering factory. I ask if he still feels working-class, with his Merc and his salary and his houses - which he now shares with his second wife, a Palestinian scientist. "I'm absolutely working-class. It's how you relate to other people, how awkward you feel when you kiss them... do you kiss them on one cheek or two? Are you absolutely confident about what to do with all that cutlery? Do you switch over when the opera comes on? Have you ever been to ballet?"

I say that a good test is having a cleaner. Middle-class people are good at underpaying and bossing them, but working-class people aren't, no matter how wealthy they might have become. He agrees: "I can't bear the thought of somebody being given orders to clean things in my house." Yes, he does have a cleaner, but he also has a solution. "I try to be out when she comes."

I ask George to describe his politics in one word. "Socialist. Although I'm not as left wing as you think." Surprise me, George. "I'm strongly against abortion. I believe life begins at conception, and therefore unborn babies have rights. I think abortion is immoral." You can't be pro-choice? "Who is choosing for the child?"

Well, I say, better the unborn unwanted child than the born unwanted one. "I can't accept that, because I believe in God. I have to believe that the collection of cells has a soul." No, he says, his faith in God cannot be shaken, and, yes, he hopes to go to Heaven. "I believe the souls of the departed will be there, and that I will see the good people I have known again." What would Hell be? A two-up, two-down shared with Tony Blair, Charles Moore, Julie Burchill and a cleaner who demands a lot of direction? "That would be hell," he confirms.

We stop at a motorway services. Cheese toasties all round. George's treat. I have to say, if he did ever earn £375,000 a year from the Hussein regime, he's not spending it on snacks. Then it's back on the road, arriving in Walsall at seven-ish, but then, alas, Rima's map-reading skills being what they are, we drive round and round the same one-way system 78 times. George tries not to lose it. "The air in this car would be very blue if you weren't in it," he tells me.

Eventually, we do make the venue. "Anywhere to park, brother?" George asks the chap outside. "No, brother, but if you drive up to the roundabout and take the first left..." George passes the keys to Rima. "She'll do it," he says. He does not add: "Would you mind, sister?" He might be quite good at bossing staff about, after all.

George is the last speaker and, yes, the best. Then it's home on the last train to London. The day hasn't been so bad. I've quite enjoyed it, actually. I like George. I've no idea if the Telegraph's allegations against him are true or not. But I do hope not. Then, maybe I'm just assuming that any enemy of New Labour has to be a friend of mine. It may take me a while to forgive the egg-and-moustache thing, though. Obviously.