- The Guardian, Saturday 1 May 2010
✒I recognised Mrs Duffy. My mother comes from that neck of the woods, and it's full of what I used to think of as spunky old ducks. In the 1950s, they would have scarves on their heads, and would be rolling up their sleeves as they marched out to set the men to rights, and buy two cream horns. Gracie Fields came from Rochdale, and she would have chewed Gordon Brown up and spat out the pips.
Here's an odd thing. I was on the BBC news channel, live, when the prime minister was still inside her house. I said I thought it was ridiculous that a man facing an almost impossible election campaign and an economic crisis that may be even worse than the last one should spend his time going from place to place issuing apologies like a penitent medieval pilgrim, scourging himself at one station of the cross after another.
At which point Brown came out with that terrifying smile and announced: "I am a penitent sinner." I don't imagine for one moment that he and Mrs Duffy were watching 24-hour news. ("Another garibaldi, prime minister?" "Noo, but I will just catch the headlines.") But I liked the coincidence.
✒If we have a hung parliament I do hope the Lib Dems realise that, to echo David Cameron, with power comes responsibility. The party has changed since the days when most of the men wore wispy beards and had eco-sensitive shoes that looked like upturned cornish pasties. They used to be festooned with as many badges as Formula One drivers. But these days most can pass for normal. They've been out of power for so long, pursuing their own causes, that they are bound to want to seize the opportunity to get as many of them into law as possible.
Cameron: Now, Nick, the markets are very jittery. Sir Gus tells me we have to cut a deal within 24 hours or face the mother and father of all sterling crises.
Clegg: No one is more aware of that than me, David. But first, where do you stand on secondary drinking?
Cameron: What? Now please look at these suggested cuts.
Clegg: I doubt I'll be able to take my members with you unless you give a clear undertaking on a non-gender specific right of monarchical succession …
✒Electioneering has changed. When I had lunch with Nicholas Soames this week (wonderful potted prawns, local ham, egg and chips, since you ask, and all at the brilliant, refurbished Crown in Horsted Keynes, Sussex) he told me that it was always thought bad form for candidates to do anything so vulgar as discuss the issues.
Once his mother, Mary Soames, was meeting the voters on behalf of her husband, Christopher, then an MP. She had a long chat with a group of women, and left trailing fragrant clouds behind her. "What a charming woman Lady Soames is," one of them said. "Why do you think she came to see us?"
✒I saw Sir Christopher speak when he was our man in Paris. He was introducing Peter Ustinov at an Anglo-French occasion. "Peter Ustinov," he said, in a French accent as bad as that of his father-in-law, Winston Churchill, "est ecrivain, producteur, acteur, metteur-en-scène, directeur, humoriste … On peut dire qu'il a trop de talent."
The French were baffled. Too much talent? You might as well have too much money, or too much delicious food.
✒Reader's joke: Michael O'Leary of Ryanair is in a bar in Dublin, where he orders a pint of Guinness. "That'll be one euro," says the barman.
"That's a very reasonable price!"
The barman leans forward. "And will ye be wanting a glass as well, Mr O'Leary?"
✒Brung! It's the doorbell. There on our doorstep is the Lib Dems' Vince Cable, canvassing. It feels more like a visitation than a visit, which is odd, since I know Vince in my working life, and he is assiduous at attending local events. The Scouts can't have a bring and buy sale without him turning up and buying a tie.
Yet, at your front door, he seems more like a star. It's context, I suppose, as if Ant and Dec popped round to sell you oven gloves or you opened your door and there was Melvyn Bragg asking if you were happy with your gas supplier.
✒I am building up a collection of bonkers election addresses, leaflets etc. A pleasing one arrives from Bradford, where the Labour candidate insists that the city has too much "wreck less" driving, which I would have thought is exactly what you want. Keep them coming, please.
✒ To Hatchards for their annual writers' party, which is always a wonderful bash, and poignant this week because it marks the retirement of Roger Katz, the shop's almost legendary manager.
Hatchards may now be owned by Waterstone's, but it remains an island of sanity and gravitas in the midst of all those comedians' autobiographies ("I was shagging a dozen women a day, and frankly I was out of control"), misery memoirs ("I dreaded the sound of my father, drunk, trying to get his key in the lock, for I knew what was to come") and winsome TV chef tie-ins ("cram the whelks into the avocado, and hey presto!"). Hatchards still sells piles of proper books to proper readers, which is why lots of celebrities attend: Clive James and Michael Frayn, for two.
It is a micro-climate. Writers are told "Hatchards have just ordered another 70 copies," and that sounds wonderful. But it doesn't mean your book has sold more than half a dozen elsewhere.