Country life
Answering back
Leanda de Lisle
By the time Peter had driven me to New- castle I had so many pills inside me I rat- tled when I walked. They left me feeling subdued, which may have been a good thing as the first person I met was Anne Marie. She might have had the decency to be ugly, but, no, she was beautiful. I looked pale, someone said, and they took me off to make-up where I was dabbed with foun- dation and the contents of my runny nose. My mother was unimpressed with the results: 'Those black eyes, the pallid lips,' she said, aghast, when she rang the next day. So unlike that 'fine-looking man' on my right, another relative assured me.
This fine-looking man was John Red- wood. Those of you who are aware that he is more commonly described as 'the Vul- can' may be interested to learn that he really is quite strange. He moves like a robot and his eyes are always fixed on a point in space no less than two feet away from any living thing. I think he must be very shy or suffer from a kind of social dyslexia. He sweetly tried to comfort me as we shuffled towards the studio, saying something like, 'You'll be all right.' I'm sure his concern was genuine, but it sound- ed forced. It's as if he can't process social signals automatically and has to consider them individually. A conversation with him has a digitalised, rather than an organic, feel to it.
I was sorry to discover that the questions on QT are not rigged in any way. It's like sitting an exam paper. You have a good idea what areas will be covered — namely those stories which have appeared in that week's papers — but what exactly the ques- tions will be and how they'll be phrased remain unknown until you are sitting in front of the audience. The editor of the Express, Rosie Boycott, who is going on Question Time this week, gave me some useful advice, including 'Make eye contact with a few friendly faces'. Unfortunately, being unused to the glare of stage lights I was as blind as a hare caught in headlamps and just as confused.
Jack Cunningham didn't say anything to annoy me until the end of the programme when he announced that hereditary mem- bers of the House of Lords own most of the countryside and do their best to keep everyone else off it. It was too late for me to answer back, but I think he did himself more harm than good by insulting people's intelligence in this way. It was reminiscent of his remarks about the people on the Countryside March being manipulated by sinister interests. The audience didn't cheer. It was just the kind of old-fashioned, class-war language that will get him reshuf- fled. I'll be almost sorry to see him go. He's a big bouncy Tigger of a man, and likeable, despite his bullying streak.
As for my performance, I managed to answer the questions put to me, but I wasn't exactly dazzling. Anyway, it's all over now and I'm back in my library cell. Hooray for the country life.
`For the benefit of the tape, the suspect nods his head.'
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