Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 1 January 1970

From our UK edition

Dave is not to be disturbed unless it’s urgent DIDs (Desert Island Discs) fallout MondayDave is en famille and not to be disturbed unless it’s urgent DIDs (Desert Island Discs) fallout, which means Mr Hague is in charge. Officially. Unofficially, DD keeps ringing up and tasking us with impossible demands. He may as well ask how many foreign prisoners it takes to change a light bulb. And if he doesn’t stop calling me Tammy I will scream. Poppy is so besotted she has even started talking like him, military references and all. Says DD is like Hannibal at Cannae, positioning his troops in a thin line around the mighty Labour army ready to massacre them from the outside in. I think she has finally lost it. Glassy eyes in Starbucks again.

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

From our UK edition

I do want to believe there’s more to life than money but it does seem a bit — well — impractical MONDAYI do want to believe there’s more to life than money but it does seem a bit — well — impractical. Mummy is furious. Says if Dave would care to pay our vet’s bills for the two months Sesame has been malingering with horsey colic, then she will happily admit that money isn’t everything. In the meantime, if it’s OK with Dave, we’ll just go on working our fingers to the bone for hard cash. ‘It’s all right for them,’ she rants. ‘If their horses get sick, I expect they just sell another painting.’ Daddy says we are going to have to tighten our belts.

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 1 January 1970

From our UK edition

TuesdayHateful, horrid Tessa Jowell. Things have gone mad at Tory headquarters since the stupid row over her silly husband. Everyone sweating over share certificates. I’ve been put on to a new unit monitoring ‘outside interests’. Poppy wrote ‘Jose Mourinho’ on her form and had to start again. Childish, really. We have to ask our MPs whether they ‘or their spousal partner of choice’ have an ‘offshore’. They’re all being jolly rude about it. I don’t think any MP, no matter how closely related to Winston Churchill, should be able to tell a press officer to forcibly insert their official brief ...Well, anyway. Wednesday amMore misery. We have to find out who has put money into ‘hedge funds’.

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody

From our UK edition

ThursdayOnly my third day, and I must say that it isn’t so easy being a Tory press officer in the AD era — that’s After Dave (My joke!). People may think it’s all frappaccinos and solar panels at Victoria Street but the reality is pretty shocking, actually. There’s the District Line, for a start, with all those horrible smells (whoops! Memo to self: must be more ‘odour inclusive’). But Nigel says the real problem is we don’t know what to do with all this ‘popularity stuff’. Today I have every national daily and most of the Sundays on the phone demanding the first interview with Sam about the new baby. Nigel says she is the Madonna of the modern Tory party.