DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY
MONDAY Hot: where’s the glacier when you need it? Am sick of trawling internet for violent lyrics Dave can use for campaign against rap: just because someone called ‘Lethal Bizzle’ said he was a ‘donut’ — I don’t even understand why this is an insult. Various references to cracking skulls, shooting up and hanging with crews — or should I say ‘crewz’? Found repeated use of ‘their’ instead of ‘there’, possessive its with an apostrophe etc. Honeztly, Dave should launch a campaign against bad spelling in hip-hop if you ask me. Thankfully, we are moving on soon. Our next campaign is an attack on novelty mobile ringtones. ‘Cameron takes on Crazy Frog.’ How can it lose? That should silence the spoilsports who say we need policy.
Jed, our new strategic communications chief — catchphrase: ‘Don’t call me Alastair’ — says policy is over. ‘Soul statements’ are the way forward. ‘People don’t wanna hear what politicians are gonna do,’ he explains. ‘Boring! They wanna hear what politicians feeeeel, man!’ He is so cool.
TUESDAY Mr Letwin mooching about. Asked whether he wanted a cup of tea, he said: ‘On the one hand, yes, one would very much like to be included in a tradition as wholesome as the office tea run. On the other hand, one would have to counterbalance this by recognising that one has already had two cups this morning which, although made with a good deal of milk, may well, if supplemented by a third, lead, by the end of the day, to a surfeit of caffeine.’ Nigel says we will have to evacuate the office when he starts sifting through the work of the policy commissions.
WEDNESDAY ‘The Lightning Rods’ strategy worked so well with poor Mr Maude and the A-list we are applying it to EPP fiasco. After much hard briefing, Mr Hague is now successfully installed in all the papers as a ‘shilly-shallier’ who ‘bears the impression of the last person who sat on him’. Ring him to ask what I’m to do with the latest pile of letters from the EPP-ileptics. He says: ‘Hold on a minute,’ then drops the phone. Can hear squeaking of bare feet on gym floor and muffled shouts. I think somebody did actually just sit on him.
THURSDAY Big problem with Queen’s Birthday Celebration at St Paul’s. We have 15 invites and 150 backbenchers who want them. So we’ve drawn up a league table of the most pompous Tory MPs ever on the basis that they will cause most fuss if they don’t go. The lucky winners are: Sir Patrick Cormack, Sir Nicholas Winterton, Sir Peter Tapsell and Sir Michael Spicer. Dave thought we should have a couple of ‘great gurlies’ so stuck his finger on a list and it landed on G, which is great news for Justine Greening and Cheryl Gillan. A job well done I think.
Inviting Dame Patrick was a mistake. Despite Justine being assigned to mark him at all times, he broke through the line, rushed up to Blair, bowed and curtseyed and begged him not to retire, ‘or we’ll end up with that little squirt’. Not even going to let myself imagine who he means.
tamzin.lightwater@spectator.co.uk
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