The scene in the Simpsons in which the then Prime Minister Tony Blair was found greeting all UK visitors at the airport (to which Homer responds "Wow - I can't believe we just met Mr Bean!") might just be a slight exaggeration. However, if we take a celebrity at random....say, Hugh Grant:
- my sister and her friends once mobbed him on a golf course in St Andrews (she is still the proud possessor of a photo of three very excited eighteen year old girls beaming delightedly while a distinctly middle aged looking Hugh grins sheepishly in the background like their slightly overfriendly uncle, equipped with a suitably pervy baseball cap);
- one of my friends is regularly overtaken by him whilst jogging near her home; and
- another of my friends once attended a "surprise birthday party" for him despite never having met him before (maybe he was the surprise). Said birthday party consisted of watching three episodes of the In Betweeners in a tiny cinema in Soho. A better way to celebrate turning fifty two (yes...he really is that old) I cannot imagine.
The upshot of this is that in the UK, especially in London, it is not uncommon to come across famous people on a regular basis, and this also extends to the realm of politics. Whilst in America even lesser presidential primary candidates get their own security teams (forcing Rick Santorum to use protection for the first time at the age of 54), here in the UK they tend to just wander round looking rather ordinary.
Dave
I can report, for example, that I am at least half an inch taller than David Cameron, our current prime minister, who I was studiously ignored by when I made my first (and, hopefully for the British public's sake, my last) visit to 10 Downing Street a month or so ago for a reception in honour of the Spirit of London Awards, which is an annual ceremony at which awards are presented to young people for their talent in the arts, media, sport, campaigning and education. I was invited along in my capacity as a charitable trustee with some connection to this event.
Big Dave breezed into the room about halfway through the reception, fresh from having addressed the House of Commons about the Leveson Report (and looking surprisingly composed under the circumstances - however my plot to steal his copy of the Report just so that I could spend the next two weeks watching him squirm whilst pretending he had read it was sadly unsuccessful). As he entered, pretty much everyone else in the room suddenly cut off the conversations they had been having with dull fellows like me, and started circling The Big Man like vultures circling a freshly bloodied corpse (not a bad analogy, actually).
My talons were sadly not sharp enough to allow me to get to the front of the queue, and before I managed to get in so much as an "All right, Dave" in the style of Trigger from Only Fools and Horses, he had already smoothly small talked his way through the room and across to the podium where he made a short speech, which, despite lacking any Winnie the Pooh references (please see below), which means that he will only, at best, ever be the second coolest PM I have seen in person, was quite well received, apart from a gratuitous reference to the Big Society which received the silent chorus of eye rolling it so richly deserved.
Vince
But to be honest it is probably for the best that I did not get a chance to speak to Mr Cameron, as I had neglected to prepare any particularly pithy or witty conversation openers for the great man to respond to, and I fear that it would have come off as an unfortunate reprise of the occasion on which my friend Eddie and I had a somewhat awkward meeting with Business Secretary Vince Cable, then the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, in the bar of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 2006.
Vince had just given a pretty interesting address to the Trinity Hall Politics Society and had obviously decided that it would be good to follow it up with a quiet pint, a notion that was quickly spoiled by two slightly star struck students (yes...I was star struck by Vince Cable, I do indeed need to get out more) loping up to him and saying "Hello Dr Cable". His face rapidly went from:
- incredulity (how can they have recognised me. I don't understand...I'm wearing my hat! My hat makes me invisible! Damn these crafty Cambridge students, they have penetrated my cunning disguise);
- terror (this is it...I'm going to die, aren't I!);
- relief (OK, maybe I might get out of this alive, maybe they're just two students wanting to congratulate me on my speech);
- panic (I have nothing to say to them...why won't they leave me alone?);
- more panic (the bar lady is scowling at me); and
- more relief (phew, she scowls at everyone...she seems to particularly hate that ginger bloke, I wonder why).
We quickly realised that neither of us could think of anything more to say to him (intelligent or otherwise) at that point and we moved on, leaving him whimpering into his pint and clutching his hat tightly around his ears.
Trish
Distressing though this encounter unquestionably was, I can still happily say that Vince is not the politician I have terrified most. I was holidaying with my wife Julie in Cornwall a few years ago, and on our first night in Penzance we found a nice looking restaurant for dinner. At one of the other tables was sitting a middle aged lady who seemed oddly familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place her. She looked as though she might be one of my friends' mums, but I couldn't think of whose mum she would be.
So I did what any sensible person would do in those circumstances. I decided to stare at her like a beady eyed hawk until I could work out who she was. I tried to do it as surreptitiously as possible, but my idea of surreptitious was clearly not the same as hers, as she quickly started to look more and more agitated for reasons which I could not fathom. It was only when I was about to leave the restaurant, having enjoyed my dinner far more than she probably did, that it struck me that she looked uncannily like Patricia Hewitt, the former Labour Health Secretary, who I had in fact seen in person once before, at a recording of Question Time.
I don't suppose she recognised me, although Charles Kennedy (former Lib Dem leader who seems to have done the job more effectively despite apparently having been drunk for most of his seven years as leader than any of his successors has managed sober) who had also been on the Question Time panel, and who had leered at me cheerfully when he saw me kissing Julie, might have done (never let it be said that I don't know how to show a girl a good time...mind you, this is coming from a man who chose Borat as our first "date movie")! But poor Patricia had ruffled a fair few feathers as Health Secretary and she obviously thought I was a disgruntled doctor out for revenge. To this day she is probably still having nightmares about being hunted by a ginger Dr Shipman with a Cornish accent.
Jack
I am usually much better at politician spotting than I was that night. Indeed this skill does not desert me even when I am abroad. For example when I was in Rome in 2007 I spotted former Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister Michael Portillo walking past me, clearly also on holiday. Sadly he rounded a corner before I could point him out to Julie, much to her frustration. However, later that afternoon she got her chance to demonstrate that she was able to find her own politicians, thank you very much, when she saw a familiar face at a Metro station, turned to me triumphantly, and announced loudly "that's Jack Straw".
Unfortunately (a) it turned out his face was not as familiar as all that, and (b) "Jack" was the only other person who heard her apart from me. Evidently a bit of a politics geek himself (or perhaps excited at the thought of finally having found his long lost twin brother), the bogus Jack started frantically looking around to see if he could spot the real Jack, only to find that the only Demon Headmaster lookalike on the platform was himself.
John
Big Dave was not the first Prime Minister I have had the pleasure of sharing a room with. Another of my more exciting early dates with Julie involved going to the recording of a BBC Radio 4 programme which invited celebrities to come in and read out some of their favourite poetry. The two celebrities for this edition were John Major and sitcom legend Richard Briers. Julie, having grown up with some awareness of British politics but somewhat removed from it on the other side of the Atlantic, seems as a girl to have got the idea into her head that Mr Major was some sort of sinister bogeyman who probably lived under the bed, ate children and dressed up as grandma in his spare time. In fairness, my awareness of US politics at that stage of my development was significantly weaker (for some reason as a boy I had got it into my head that Ronald Reagan looked a bit like a bearded elderly tramp, an image which it took some years and several history lessons to shake off).
Because of Julie's misconceptions, she was somewhat surprised to be greeted by the sight of a tall, grey, amiable looking (and surprisingly imposing) middle aged man who proceeded to charm his audience with his gentle voiced delivery of various poems, most of which incidentally appear to have come from Winnie the Pooh. No doubt these charming stories involving "a bear of very little brain" brought back fond memories of some of the people he came across during his illustrious(ish) political career. Ironically Richard Briers turned out to be a thoroughly malevolent psychopath ("listen to my poems or I'll break your f***ing legs, you got me?")
Conclusion
So, to sum up, if you do have an encounter with a politician, what is the best way to respond? Here are a few hints:
- If they are at a restaurant, they probably don't want to talk to you, so it's best to leave them alone.
- If they are at a bar, they might be eager to chat (I had a very pleasant conversation with former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind at the Cambridge Union, and remember coming away thinking that he would probably make quite a good Prime Minister but would never make it because of the dandruff). However if they are wearing a hat, again, it is best to avoid them like the plague.
- If lost for a conversation starter, in my experience politicians tend to have surprisingly good taste in poetry.
Happy New Year!
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