Westminster Corridors
The Talent of turning men (or women) into Ridicule and exposing to laughter those conversed with is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers. Thus, it roust be accorded, the Prime Minister is little (which we all know), ungenerous (well, look at the way he has treated poor Mr Reg 'Low Calorie' Prentice), and has a temper (Mr Joe 'SS' Haines, the Downing Street storm trooper would readily confirm that).
It being commonplace that diseases spread rapidly in unhygienic surroundings, it came as no surprise to my friend Sir Simon d'Audley to discover that the whole of the Ruffian front bench at the Club had contracted a severe dose of the little ungenerous tempers.
What did surprise him was to hear at a recent meeting of the Lobby Journalists such words from Mrs 'Harmony Hair Spray' Thatcher to indicate that she too had caught the disease. Asked by a scribe, so Sir Simon tells me, if she had congratulated our beloved Prime Minister on his becoming a proud grandfather, she said somewhat curtly that she had not.
"But," persisted the scribe, "it's twin girls." "Oh," said Mrs Thatcher, "it is hardly a surprise. He has begun to look rather grandfatherlike." Such were the hysterics with which this jest was greeted that Harmony Hair Spray has decided to engage in a more formal joust with Mr Wilson across the Dispatch Box.
All of which goes to show that the proceedings at the Club have reached a new, high level of dignity and purpose. No one, Sir Simon says, is higher or more dignified that the delectable Miss Josephine Richardson, who is appropriately the Ruffian MP for Barking.
Sadly, many Members of the Club have failed to notice that beneath her gorgeous, auburn tresses there is a mind as keen as quicksilver in a mad barometer (as my Cousin Addison once ought to have said). Miss Richardson, or Jo as she is affectionately known by Mr Ian Mikardo, the fun-loving MP for (no, wait for it) Tower Hamlets Bethnal Green and Bow, has great business acumen.
My readers will recall that Mr Mikardo, or Mik as he is affectionately known by Miss Richardson, perceived her real capabilities when he elevated her (if he will excuse the expression) from being a mere secretary to the important post of co-director of Mikardo Exports Ltd.
Being co-directors, there is nothing more natural than that they should have adjacent offices in the Norman Shaw Building at Westminster which, vacated by the Metropolitan Police, has now been made over to senior Members of the Club who cannot find offices in the Club itself. And as she is still his private secretary, there is no reason to comment on the fact that the adjacent rooms have an interconnecting door.
Like the Windmill, Sir Simon says, it never closes; but that is by the by. The reason I bring this matter to the attention of my readers is that there has been much idle gossip about this virtuous, gentle lady (the aforementioned Miss Richardson) getting a room in the Norman Shaw Building at all.
Fie on it, meddlesome gossips. As I told Sir Simon, malice is all in the mind. The rooms, as has been made clear, are for Members who, by virtue of long service to the Club, are deemed worthy of the splendours of the Victorian monstrosity that stands beside the Thames. (No, I do not mean Mr Mikardo, for he is Edwardian.)
Long service to the Club being the qualification, I must point out immediately that Mr Mikardo was first elected in 1945. Miss Richardson joined the Club (if she will excuse the expression) last February. So there, and let
• us hear no more about it.
May 1 conclude by wondering exactly what Mr Edward Heath, a retired Tory gentleman of no fixed abode, is doing in Spain? A picture in one of the popular prints last showed him in a nondescript fishing vessel catching crabs in the Mediterranean. Do any of my readers have news of him? Please come back Ted. With this lot around, all (well almost) is forgiven.
• Tom Puzzle
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