Why I decided to kill Tamzin Lightwater

19 June 2010

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The Cameroons are beyond parody and the coalition lacks charm, says Melissa Kite. We both feel bad about it, but Tamzin and I have chosen to call it a day

V sad... No, it’s no good, I can’t talk like that. Only she can, which is why the retirement of Tamzin Lightwater is very sad because she is so much funnier than I could ever be. I know this because I once saw an irate posting on the internet under the heading ‘Who is Tamzin?’, by a man outraged by the suggestion that she might be me. This was ridiculous, he said. Tamzin was funny and clever which proved she could never be a woman, least of all that ghastly Melissa Kite. Well, I can understand that. Tamzin had a lot of extremely loyal followers who were intensely protective of her.

Since she announced her retirement — and my involvement — I have been inundated with (v lovely) messages from people begging me to bring her back. I feel so guilty because when she told me she wanted to wind up her Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody I did not argue. I knew how busy she had become since taking up a key role in No. 10.

She was also, I can reveal, finding it increasingly tricky to describe the goings-on of coalition government. In many ways, she told me, it just wasn’t funny any more.

Having surfed the curve of Compassionate Conservatism, giving her readers a weekly potted guide to life in the cappuccino haze of CCHQ — the Tie Guidelines, the smoothies, the U-turns on U-turns — she really did not think it her business to try to make sense of the equally bizarre but infinitely less charming Camer-Clegg regime.

We both feel incredibly bad for letting her fans down. But if it makes her kind readers feel any better, no one feels more bereft at this moment than me. For four years she has been at my side, my best friend and ally, the person who more than anyone else understood what it was like to work in the rough and tumble world of politics.

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