Boris and the startled nanny
Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, threw a party to mark the website’s 15th birthday on Wednesday, at which a story was told about a misunderstanding between Boris Johnson and a nanny that ended in conception. BoJo, you see, once lived next door to Roberts, who asked him to keep an eye on the house while she was on holiday. “You betcha,” Boris replied, but one day he heard a noise and saw a figure moving in the front room.
Thinking it a burglar, Boris leapt into action, shouted through the letterbox and then, having sent his wife to guard the back door, posted a note: “Dear burglar, we have got you surrounded.” The terrified nanny, who barely spoke English, handed in her notice when Roberts returned. It was while searching for a replacement that Roberts got the idea to create an online forum: presumably for all those other women whose staff had been startled by a Boris.
There’s still time before the election for politicians to learn how to spell the places they represent. Recent leaflets from Stuart Andrew, a Yorkshire MP, missed out the first “e” in Guiseley. It is lucky that he isn’t MP for the Welsh village where he grew up: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgog-erychwyrndrobwllllantysili-ogogogoch.
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Expert advice
Last week one of the TMS elves met Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote Good Omens with the late Sir Terry Pratchett in 1990. The novel was Gaiman’s first and he recalled sending the Discworld author a draft for advice. Pratchett liked it so much that he offered to help him to finish it. As Gaiman said: “It was like Michelangelo phoning you up and saying: ‘Do you want to do a ceiling?’”
With the budget coming up next week, the chancellor might find this piece of wisdom from Jingo, Pratchett’s 1997 novel, handy. “Taxation,” he wrote, “is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo.”
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In the market for votes
David Steel, the former Liberal leader, threw a dinner this week to mark 50 years in politics. When he first sought election, he met an elderly woman who declared that she had shaken hands with only two politicians — him and Gladstone — but the public were not always so helpful. In the 1983 campaign, Steel approached a woman, with two camera crews behind him, and said: “Hello, I’m David Steel, here to support Simon Hughes.” His deflation was evident as she replied: “And I’m Mrs Roberts, here to buy a lettuce.”
Two more entries in our political anagrams series. Pauline Archer thinks that Theresa May could be a “Steamy Hera”, a troubling thought, while Eleanor Doughty points out that Nicky Morgan, whose education brief covers an epidemic of initialism, can be arranged to form “Acronym King”.
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Counting the days
Angela Eagle, the shadow leader of the Commons, used one of her last appearances at the dispatch box this parliament to mock the Lib Dems. For a few seconds it seemed that William Hague, her opposite number, would rise above it. “I am not going to join the honourable lady in making fun of my Liberal Democrat colleagues,” he said. “I am going to wait for election night.”