Home > The Magazine > Features

Sunday 6 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Liz Anderson

Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

A pin-up for Scottish pensioners

‘I’m a pin-up for Scottish pensioners’

Mary Wakefield

Wednesday, 5th September 2007

Clarissa Dickson Wright speaks her mind

Great story, I say, blushing. ‘Yes.’ (Clarissa is on a roll.) ‘I mentioned it in print a few weeks ago and now I’ve become a bit of a local sex symbol! I popped into the shop to buy a paper the other day and a man came up to me and pressed his phone number into my hand. I’m a pin-up for Scottish pensioners!’

It’s not just her own private life up for grabs. Clarissa’s time at the Bar overlapped with that of several prominent New Labourites, and she’ll discusses their escapades with equal gusto: ‘Cherie Blair was clever but desperately needy and always jumping on Derry Irvine.’ I wince. ‘Actually, Derry Irvine was quite a sexy guy back then,’ says Clarissa. ‘He radiated intelligence.’ And then there’s Tony Blair. ‘He was a few years younger than me but I remember him well. He was very glib, a chancer and, you know, he wasn’t really respected by anyone of my generation. Everybody used to say, it’s just as well he’s going into politics because he’ll never succeed at the Bar. We used to call him Miranda.’ Because he was wet? ‘No, no, he wasn’t called Miranda because he was wet, ducky!’ Clarissa guffaws impatiently. ‘Remember that scene in The Tempest when Miranda sees the sailors? Well then. He got on conspicuously well with all the male junior clerks. Everybody knew it.’ But he’s married now, I say. ‘So are a lot of people.’

A fan approaches at that moment, Clarissa turns away to sign her book and my mind races. Is she exaggerating? Clarissa admits to telling porkies at school, but I can’t believe she’d just make it up. I decide to appeal to Spectator readers who may have been Blair’s contemporaries at the Bar: was Tony Miranda?

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Next page

More articles from: Mary Wakefield | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

James Forsyth

James Forsyth talks to Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the President, about his new book attacking the Bush administration, its methods and its deceits

The Law Lords are right to resist the government

Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our liberties

I was starstuck by David Cameron

Steven Berkoff

In the week of the Spectator Summer Party, Steven Berkoff recalls another of our celebrations at which he sought out the Tory leader and forgave his confusion of Brando and Dean

How to get stabbed: you, too, can be knifed in a public place

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that it helps to be aged between 14 and 30, white and male. Being drunk and argumentative speeds things along. And no public policy seems to dissuade those who do the stabbing

Critical condition

Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans on the perils of being both playwright and critic

It’s so unfair

James Delingpole

Margaret Thatcher - the Long Walk to Finchley (BBC4)

Parisian decadence

Lloyd Evans

Marguerite (Haymarket), The Good Soul of Szechuan (Young Vic), Under Milk Wood (Tricycle)

Welcome to the United States of Amnesia

Mary Wakefield

Gore Vidal tells Mary Wakefield that America has forgotten its constitutional roots, and explains why Bobby Kennedy was ‘the biggest son of a bitch in politics’

Cameron gets ready for No. 10 — and Boris must wait his turn

Fraser Nelson

David Cameron talks to Fraser Nelson about his local election triumphs, admits that he is not going to ‘agree on everything’ with the new Mayor of London, and says Boris should join the queue to become PM after him