This may shock you but apparently some politicians lie. Lord Sugar, that George Washington of electronic gizmos, made the claim last week and said that any MP caught telling fibs should be sent to prison. Edwina Currie, the reclusive former health minister, was dragged on to television yesterday to explain why lying goes with the job and admitted that even she had told the odd porky.
“What did you lie about?” asked Emma Barnett, the interviewer, mischievously teasing the woman who had a secret four-year affair with a future prime minister in the 1980s. “Anything major?”
The Times broke the news of her affair with John Major 15 years ago next month. To prevent other papers nicking it, an advert was placed in the first edition where the scoop would eventually go. In a sublime in-joke by the editor of the time, the advert holding the space was for Currys.
Cheating seventies-style
The Football Association wants to clamp down on players who try to con the referee. Those found guilty of diving will get a two-match ban. But cheating is not a modern sin. Paul Fletcher, a former footballer who is co-writing a novel called Saturday Bloody Saturday with Alastair Campbell, the former Downing Street spin doctor, told a TMS elf about some of the tricks when he played in the 1960s and 70s. For instance, you couldn’t use substitutes tactically, only when a player was injured. Nat Lofthouse, the Bolton manager, got round this by asking the Tannoy announcer to say: “Could Mr Smith go to gate 4.” This was a cue for the player wearing the gate number to develop a sudden and apparently nasty limp.
Nick Timothy was once known in Westminster as “the beard that’s feared” but Theresa May’s former chief of staff has now taken a razor to his luxuriant quiddity and the Beard Liberation Front are bristling. “His beard was iconic,” Keith Flett, the BLA’s spokesman, says. “It’s as if WG Grace or Karl Marx had suddenly appeared without a beard.” Is no institution safe from Tory cuts?
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Long and short of it
Who has uttered the longest word in parliament? Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 29-letter floccinaucinihilipilification was said to have been beaten by a teenager��s pneumonoultramicro-scopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), but a reader observed last week that this word, used in the youth parliament, was not officially recorded. Instead, Michael Pritchett claims the laurels for using anti-ecclesiasticaldisestablishmentarian-ism (42) in a select committee in 2008. In fact, they are all too brief. In 2005, in a debate on smoking, Betty Williams, MP for Conwy, mentioned the Anglesey town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch (58 letters and a hyphen). The Mogg really needs to raise his game.
After recent items about those clumsy nursery rhyme water-carriers, Ian Smith offered this new version: “Jack and Jill went into town to fetch some chips and sweeties. Now Jack can’t keep his heart rate down and Jill has diabetes.” I sense a competition starting. Let’s have your modern takes on songs we learnt as children.
