Labour MPs first tried to ban me from the Commons press gallery two decades ago, after I ridiculed Speaker ‘Gorbals Mick’ Martin. Jim Sheridan MP said I was ‘abusing the facilities’. Only later did we discover big Jim was the one abusing the facilities, sticking a £1,000 white leather bed on expenses. Now Derbyshire South’s Samantha Niblett wants my parliamentary pass revoked because I reported that a woman at Andy Burnham’s social-care speech was wearing a snortingly short skirt. She sat in front of Eyelashes Andy and crossed those pins Kenny Everett-style. I wondered if that might be why our new PM kept losing his philosophical thread. Cue a social-media hoo-hah. My comment was viewed more than a million times on X. This passed me by because I do not read X. For social media I follow James Lees-Milne’s dictum on television, that it is for appearing on, not looking at. Friends hungrily related the outrage at my hemline ‘sexism’. Bridget Phillipson, equalities minister, called me ‘debased’. Publicity-prone Stella Creasy MP complained that I ‘stared down’ on MPs ‘from the parliamentary lobby on a daily basis’, adding: ‘Shudder doesn’t begin to cover it.’ Sketchwriters are in fact gallery reporters. We do not enter the lobby, which is downstairs. Stella has been an MP for 16 years. It is odd she does not know that. As for Ms Niblett, she’s the one who in April called for a ‘summer of sex’ and duly earned the condemnation of the puritan left. First sight of a short skirt and now she’s clutching her dewlaps. Has the Nibbler been nobbled?
Sketchwriters cartoon the boobies who govern us. We deal in vanity and indignation. If we like short skirts it is because they are comical – in what they do to the men who boggle at them. Policy does not grip us. The cut of a politician’s jib is our thing, the more excessive the better. Take Bridget. At the despatch box she seems permanently cheesed-off, lip curling like grilled bacon rind. She spits disgust at Tories and glares, licking the outside of her teeth. Bridget is a hoot. Two decades ago, Gorbals Mick summoned my boss, Paul Dacre, for a reprimand. Dacre had better things to do but a Mail executive did give the Serjeant-at-Arms a three-bottle lunch at the Garrick. I was told to continue writing about Gorbals Mick as I wished.
For a church fête at Sollers Hope, Herefordshire, volunteers baked cakes, organised stalls and ran a dog show. One of our daughters entered Rupert, her poodle-basset cross. Infectiously cheerful, he won the waggiest tail contest. Bridget Phillipson should try it someday. She might win a box of Bonios.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has been in Africa, yacking about how she will give away £100 million in slavery reparations. She should look closer to home. The Church of England pays quasi-slave rates to its musicians and organists, such as my wife. In Ghana the archbishop visited King Osei Tutu II of the Ashanti, who wore an off-the-shoulder dress showing beefy upper arms. Is one allowed to mention that? Osei, 76, whose throne is called the Golden Stool, was almost waggier-tailed than Rupert. So might you be if some goofy white person in a pointy hat turned up and offered millions of quid for nothing. As a former nurse, the archbishop possibly knows more about stools than she does about slavery. The King, before his enstoolment, took a management diploma from North London polytechnic and worked for the Mutual of Omaha insurance company in Toronto. He will enjoy spending millions of unearned English pounds but volunteers at rural church fêtes may wonder: ‘Why do we bother?’
Bad year in the kitchen garden. Herefordshire’s rabbits have finally overcome myxomatosis and the county is overrun. What plants the drought has not killed, rabbits have eaten. The one thing to flourish was, I thought, skirret, a medieval veg reportedly not unlike a carrot. Tiny seeds were bought from Amazon. Weeks were spent on germination. How tenderly I transplanted seedlings to a bed of pillowy compost, even if they did not look as expected. Then they flowered. Darn things aren’t skirret at all, but moss roses. Bloomin’ Amazon.
Our son and his Szechuan wife, a state-school teacher, are back for a few weeks. Communist China suits them. Their income tax is around 10 per cent, healthcare (private) is efficient, crime is low and benefit scroungers are unknown. No one wears tattoos. Private enterprise is encouraged. President Xi may not be terribly keen on sketchwriters but in that he is not alone. When banished, I know where I’m going.
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