Westminster Corridors
The other night, my good friend Sir Simon d'Audley tottered into the Club in search of such stimulant as would enable him to take post for the country without endangering an apparently enfeebled constitution. After several glasses of October, he was able to splutter the word 'Popery'. He was in a state of so great agitation that every faculty was in danger of being suspended.
Having calmed him with the attendance of a well qualified physick, Sir Simon told me that Popery was again rearing its dangerous head in the club. As evidence of this deplorable state of affairs, he whispered that Mr James Dunn, a Ruffian MP from Kirkdale, was to be chairman of the highly influential Catering Committee of the Club.
This seemed not to me to be a matter of great import until it was explained that the appointment had been made on the direct instructions of the new Patronage Secretary, Mr Robert Mellish. Mr Mellish and Mr Dunn, Sir Simon avows, are both adult practising Romans.
Now my readers will recall that when the Ruffians were in Opposition, they made much of the practice of the then Patronage Secretary, Mr Francis Pym, of appointing his schoolfellows to positions of prominence. When Mr Mellish took over last month, he insisted that he would never do this. Which was understandable; for, not having been to school, the poor man has no fellows.
But to return to the Catering Committee. It is normal for the chairman of it to be chosen from the backbench ranks of the Government of the day and no one would have protested if the nomination had gone to Mr Tom Urwin from Houghton-le-Spring who is very rough. He is said to have a predilection for mutton stew and chips and cares not at all for 'fancy catering' as he calls it. A sober mutton-based diet for the Club might have been no bad thing; but then Mr Urwin decided that if he were to take on this high office, he would not have time for some of his more recondite pursuits. Accordingly, he declined the honour.
Which left the way clear for the nomination of an out-of-work pastry chef from Ely called Master Clement Freud. This Mr Freud is a Whig (well, that is what he says) which was thought by some to be a disbarrment in itself. On the other hand, as he keep telling everyone, he is a gourmet and he does love dogs. The Whigs were happy to be rid of his pestilential presence and Mr Freud began to prepare himself for the task of succeeding a Captain Maxwell (who ran the kitchens in an Eastern European sort of way) and a Commander Bennett (who increased everyone's rum ration, not least his own). Mr Freud declared that he was looking forward to 'the Perks'.
Then Pope Paul and Mr Mellish struck. Mr Freud announced to Henry that Priscilla was not the only lively bitch he knew. Meanwhile, with rumours gaining strength that Mr Mellish meant to appoint a Papist to the See of Cantuar, Mr Norman St John-Stevas from Chelmsford began camping outside the Patronage Secretary's rooms. Very persistent is Mr St John-Stevas.
Tom Puzzle •
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