This week, I had planned to write about the rise of
Momentum and the predicament of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn ... but, I thought,
do the readers of Conservative Home
really want such a serious topic, on what is the last Bank Holiday before
Christmas, when hopefully the sun is shining and you have better things to do?
Instead I have chosen a lighter topic – a collection
of “outtakes and bloomers” from my life as an Agent; the stories which normally
come out after the second bottle of wine has been opened at dinner parties –
and some only once the Port has been passed.
This is also in response to a number of comments that
West Kent is “perfect”, as we only talk about our successes. None of us is
perfect, and here is the evidence.....
Lost in the
suds of time
Back in the early 1980s I was Chairman of Wallasey
Young Conservatives. At the time the Association owned a grand building in its
own grounds, in which we held the Annual Summer Garden Party. Discovering the
first-floor kitchen knee-deep in soap-suds, after having put Fairy Liquid in
the dishwasher, I found a tea-tray and started shovelling the suds out of the
window as fast as I could ... not realising that our MP Lynda Chalker (Deputy
Foreign Secretary) was standing beneath trying to draw the raffle. It took
quite some time for her, and her security officers, to forgive me.
Paws for the
Poll
My first Parliamentary campaign was 1987. In a letter
sent to 800 Party members seeking help for the forthcoming election there were
a number of tick-box options, including “...
we will need help transporting Conservatives to the poll. Please bring a cat if you have one.” Spell-check (of
course) didn’t pick up the error, but fortunately our sensible members brought
their cars, not their cats!
Driving Dennis
Taking Dennis Thatcher back to the railway station in
my own car, after he had kindly addressed a fund-raising dinner.
“What the
&*%$ is that?!”, he asked animatedly.
“It’s my car, Mr Thatcher.”
“Your car!?
Really? Blimey. What is it?”
“It’s a Citroen 2CV, Mr Thatcher.”
“Oh! French! That explains it. Is it far to walk?”
Angela Who?
To an unknown lady, who walked into my office three
days before a General Election Polling Day, “I am so sorry, but would you mind
seeing my secretary. I am stressed, irritable, I haven’t slept or eaten for two
days, every bone in my body aches, I’ve got 20 answerphone messages to deal
with, and I’ve run out of fags. And if that’s not bad enough, in 30 minutes
bloody Angela Rumbold will turn up, and I haven’t got a clue who she is, or
what I’m going to do with her!”
Unknown Lady, “Well that’s an unusual greeting! I’m
‘Bloody Angela Rumbold’!”
Open letter,
insert foot
Following our unexpected victory in 1992 I thought it
was an ideal time to contact lapsed members, encouraging them to rejoin. My
somewhat over-triumphant letter opened with “1992
has been an outstanding year for us.” This seemed to go down well with the
target audience, apart from our newly-former MP, one of the few to lose his
seat! The letter clearly hurt, as he wrote about it many years later in a
compendium of stories published by Iain Dale.
Relatively
boring
At a West Kent fundraiser for 40:40 Target Seats.
“Who’s that old duffer talking to Charles Gadd?”
Lady sitting next to me at my table, “That’s my
husband!”
The
Distinguished Old Man of Threadneedle Street
I was at a branch garden party, and chatting to a
distinguished elderly gentleman, giving him the benefit of my wisdom on
Supply-Side Economics. Following a 15 minute conversation, during which he
politely entertained my views, we parted on a very pleasant note. “You know a
thing or two about economics”, I said. “Thank you, as do you”, he replied. In my next conversation with the host, I said,
“That chap seems to know a bit about economic policy”, to which he replied, “I
should think so! He’s the former Governor of the Bank of England.”
And finally
The Tunbridge Wells Annual Dinner is a major social
and fundraising event in our local calendar. It is run with super efficiency by
a team of volunteers who insist on having various sub-committees for each aspect
of the event, and they kindly invite me to every meeting. Having sat through
the “Menu Sub-committee”, the “Table Decoration Sub-committee”, and the
“Auction Sub-committee”, I soon realised that they were more competent than me
in making such arrangements, and that my presence was totally unnecessary. I
therefore declined the offer to attend the “Raffle Sub-committee” as I didn’t
think there was anything of value I could add. My only advice was to buy “five different
books of tickets”, so that guests might buy a strip from each book.
Come the night of the dinner, all seemed to be going
well, when our Guest of Honour, Eric Pickles MP, was invited to draw the
raffle. “56 Green”, he announced in his confident Yorkshire tone. “Over here!”,
shouted a delighted lady. “I’ve got 56 Green too!”, said the man next to me.
“So have I!”, piped up the President’s wife. “And me!!”, shrieked one of our
councillors. “As have I”, bellowed a retired Colonel at the back. Suddenly, the
horror of the situation dawned on me, the Raffle Sub-committee had taken my
advice, and bought “five different books of tickets” – sadly, they were all
green.
This resulted in the winners being chosen by the
serial number - not helped by the fact
that half the guests couldn’t find their reading spectacles, and the other half
had to turn up their hearing aids. After almost an hour, even the ebullient Mr
Pickles was beginning to flag when, finally, someone claimed the traditional
last prize .... the Lily of the Valley Talcum Powder.
So there you have it! West Kent has its triumphs, and
its disasters too. But, like most people, we are usually happier to talk about
what’s going right rather than what is going wrong ... unless it’s a Bank
Holiday Monday at the end of the “Silly Season”!
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