‘Yes! Ha! I’d have been up to the top job’

Martin Rowson

28 June 2008

In the first of an occasional series, Martin Rowson interviews Ann Widdecombe while drawing her at the same time. But this two-pronged satirical strategy does not faze the cult Tory

‘Two hours with Hislop and Merton is fun. Two hours with Jimmy Carr definitely was not.’

I couldn’t possibly disagree with that, but wasn’t there the constant danger of crossing the very thin line between being a National Treasure and a National Joke?

‘There’s always that danger, which is why I say no to a lot of things. That’s why I said no to Big Brother, and I bet George Galloway wishes he had too. And I said no to Strictly Come Dancing. I mean, can you see it? Basically, you’ve got to use your judgment, which is why I said yes to Basil Brush.’ (She’s also said yes to Celebrity Fit Club and Dr Who, appearing as one of arch-villain The Master’s political supporters.)

But she admitted that sometimes she’s made the wrong call. She was famously done over by Louis Theroux in a BBC documentary, and she mentioned one interview with Simon Sebag Montefiore and another with the Observer which were ‘truly terrible’. I asked her if that had hurt.

‘It’s immensely frustrating and intensely irritating.’

But just irritating rather than hurtful?

‘I’m trying to think of any occasion which was wounding. There must have been some, but none which went deep enough for me to remember it now.’

In some ways this impermeability to attack can sound barely human, but presumably it comes with the territory. When I said that there seemed to be something truly strange about a group of people — politicians — who seem to be able to withstand any amount of humiliation, vituperation and often hatred, frequently directed at what they represent rather than who they really are, she replied, ‘It’s perfectly normal, it’s just one of the hazards of political life, and you don’t go into that life unless you’re really confident in what you’re doing.’