PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
By Tamzin Lightwater
MONDAY Orders from Dave. We must seize back the agenda, get everyone off sleaze. Problem is, DD wants to get stuck in and keeps ringing to set us on to some new loans-for-honours research project. Nigel says we must say, ‘Yes, right away, Mr Davis’ — and then get on with what we were doing.
Dave says the Tories have changed. The days of bare-faced hypocrisy are over. Nowadays, if we are sitting in a bloody big glass house we don’t throw stones around — OK? It doesn’t seem fair. The Tories were the natural party of sleaze and now Labour has even taken that away from us.
TUESDAY Big kerfuffle in reception. Nigel called security. But it was only Sir Bob coming in for his meeting with Dave. There was a lot of shouting as usual. Sir B kept going on about Egypt, which I didn’t realise was in the Third World.
Then he screamed, ‘Would it help if I loaned you some f****** money through an offshore trust, you f***** posh ****?’ Later Poppy tells me Sir Bob wasn’t talking about Egypt at all, but calling Dave an ‘eejit’, which must be code for something. I don’t think it is particularly good.
WEDNESDAY Nice Mr Letwin in the office all afternoon again. Nigel tries to shoo him away — ‘Haven’t you got a policy review to chair, Olly?’ — but to no avail. This time, he’s wearing his ‘funny’ tie, the one with frogs. He says, ‘I say, this is a good one. A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job. . . ’ Fifteen minutes later he’s still going on and I’m the only one left. Am on verge of suicide when he gets to the punchline: ‘Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question and the economist says, “What do you want it to equal?”’ The office is empty. I tell him, ‘Oh, Oliver, you should be on telly.’ Which only makes things worse as he starts again, ‘Theresa May walks into a shoe shop ... ’ I have never been so depressed in all my life. To think I gave up working in the Movement and Meaning gallery for this.
THURSDAY
10 PM Just back from the launch of the Celebrating Diversity Taskforce where have fallen helplessly in love! It all happened so quickly. Was swept off feet by dashing and possibly rogue tabloid hack. This is tricky, of course. Apart from the obvious fact that I cannot tell Daddy am consorting with a ‘red top’, am going to have to hide it from Nigel. Could be seen as sleeping with enemy. How cool is that?! He came up to me and said, ‘I’ve been in love with you from the first moment I saw you.’ This was odd because I’d never met him before. The first moment he saw me was ten minutes earlier. But I let it go because, aside from the time Martin moved into Mummy and Daddy’s house because he’d run out of money, it’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me.
FRIDAY
Sleaze strategy collapsing. Couldn’t care less. Why hasn’t he rung?
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