Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody
By Tamzin Lightwater SUNDAY Hideous day of torment fielding non-stop calls from rude reporters asking, 'What's Dave got against Catholics?' and 'Does he support gay rights, or what?' (We should go ahead with Gids's plan to put the press through to a call centre in Delhi at weekends.) Was only just coping when Nigel rang to ask how the holding line on gay adoption was holding up. I said the holding line wouldn't hold much longer and he said, 'Well, then, you're going to have to tell them what Dave really feels about it.' Protested that I hadn't the faintest idea what Dave feels. Jed hasn't decided yet. Long pause, then he said, 'You'll just have to make something up, have a guess. . . . 'What was I supposed to do? Every phone was ringing. Someone had to make a decision. So I tossed a coin.
MONDAY Am genius. Dave does prefer gay couples to Catholic bishops! What's more, at precisely the time I was briefing support for our friends in the Same Sex Prospective Adopters Community, DD was coming out for those of a Roman persuasion! So we've managed to please everybody! Jed is thrilled and specifically asked Nigel 'what smart**** was on Sunday duty?' I may be in line for promotion....
Oh dear. Jed was in fact calling me a `smart****' in the pre-Dave 'insult' sense of the word. He didn't want it to come out that Dave was going to vote gay until next week when he gets the results of the focus groups back. He's convened three dial technology thingies at £15,000 apiece to try and put a figure on how many votes might be in it either way. Plus, he's complaining that now it's a 'tale of two Daves' which is not the narrative we were aiming for. Nigel keeps buying me coffee and saying he owes me one. Can't think why.
TUESDAY Thank goodness for the super-casino decision! Or we would be in awful lot of trouble for calling Muslim people fascists. Whoever added that bit into Dave's speech about wanting to conduct the race debate in a calm way must be feeling a bit of a ninny now! It just shows you — don't make promises you can't keep.
Dave is furious because they rewrote his speech 15 times to make sure it was right. But it seems the words 'crusade', `BNP'; 'send them back' and 'we must tackle these Islamic nutters before they kill us all' just slipped through the net. Thankfully no one is even faintly interested in our views on race hate and out-of-control immigration. We proved that in three previous general elections didn't we?!
No, the big question is: why on earth are we getting a super-casino in Manchester? We didn't even realise they had a bid in. Had to cobble together a press release welcoming the decision while expressing reservations, although none of us knew what the reservations were. I don't think they even have 'sleaze' in Manchester do they? How tedious.
WEDNESDAY Foxy just called in from his trip to Washington wanting to know how his top level meeting with the Association of American Tool Manufacturers was going down. Also curious as to why no one had called to ask for his views on gay adoption and did I want to take down a short statement? Made fi-appuccino noise and put phone down.
tamzin.lightwater@spectatorco.uk
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