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

25 June 2008

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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

This is fair enough. In fact, it was becoming quite clear that Widdecombe wasn’t going to give an inch, although my spirits rose when she peered across the table at my drawing and barked, ‘My hair is not yellow!’ Well, it was then, but I just mumbled apologetically that the picture wasn’t finished yet, and tried instead to goad her about her principles. How, for instance, did she square them with writing a column for the Daily Express, which is owned by a pornographer?

‘I don’t think that that in itself has anything to do with my work on the Express.’

But some people might.

‘Yes, some people might... but I don’t have a problem... Let me try doing on the Guardian what I do in the Express, and it wouldn’t work. The Express works for me.’

I reminded her that she had been, very briefly, the agony aunt on the Guardian, and that there must have been an element of mockery in them asking her in the first place. She laughed.

‘Oh we were laughing and laughing over the lunch with Ian Katz [G2 editor].’

So she was in on the joke?

‘Oh yeah, but that’s why it didn’t last, because there are only so many times you can tell someone to buck up and stop being so damned stupid.’ The tactic, in other words, is not just taking it without suffering any apparent damage, but giving it too, not least to yourself. And, of course, she famously gave it to Michael Howard as well with her comments about his having ‘something of the night’ about him. Did she ever regret that?

‘Never.’

I then mentioned cartoons of Howard.