No. 495: The winners
Trevor Grove reports: Following George Brown's account of how Sir Eric Roll came to be appointed head of the DEA, competitors were invited to imagine that they also were 'contro- versial, unpredictable,' politicians and to reveal how political appointments might have been made under their jurisdiction.
Though politicians themselves show little con- cern for their own lack of experience in such matters, it is not entirely surprising that few competitors (altogether a more modest breed of men) revealed themselves to be very original in their choice of political appointees. George Brown, after all, had a reputation to live up to: a man of spontaneity, of instinctive if fallible decisiveness and himself a politician of con- siderable mobility—in a word, a man who might be expected to have a certain flair for this kind of instant apotheosis. Not that there was any need for competitors to have restricted them- selves to the present band of politicos; from Caligula's horse to Baldwin's sudden stardom, history is ripe for such revelations.
Whether or not an archbishopric can be re- garded as a political appointment, Charles Lyall's entry has all the ingredients of a front- page confession a la ex-Foreign Secretary : I met Dr Font at Lady Groovey's vodka and blackcurrant party. His father, he informed me, had held the Chair of Historical Sorcery at Montreal. Or it might have been Hysterical Surgery. The good divine was quite a punster. 'What,' be demanded, Is a rat?' I was baffled, 'A rat,' he explained ecstatically, 'is an enor- mouse."Would you care to be Ebor?' I inquired instantly. He proved to be an in- spired choice for the vacant Archbishopric of York.
Erstwhile ghost Michael Stewart is now back at his old desk at the Foreign Office and it is appropriate that Andrew Duncan-Jones should have done a bit of psychic research into his change of haunting ground: Aftei- Michael Stewart had become Foreign Secretary and George was in the Department of Economic Affairs and Michael Stewart took over Economic Affairs and George moved to the Foreign Office and George resigned; I couldn't think who to have as Foreign Secre- tary. I asked Mary, but she said:. 'Politics are a bit highbrow for me.' The mention of eyebrows put me in mind of Michael Stewart, and I realised at once that he was just the man for the job.
`Has he, by Jove?' I exclaimed. 'The way things are going, I doubt if we can get anyone but Michael to take it on.' Anyone else would have seen that I was relieving the tension of the moment by making a joke about Michael Foot, but that young secretary has never had a sense of humour. So judge of my surprise the next morning when I read in the paper the name of the new Foreign Secretary.
Five guineas, then, to Charles Lyall, three each to Messrs Duncan-Jones and Maxwell, and an honourable mention to Vera Telfer.
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