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

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

‘Oh, didn’t it spawn a wonderful world of cartoons!’

Well, indeed. It spawned a wonderful world of cartoons trading on his Romanian background, portraying him as...

‘Dracula!’ she interrupted with delight. ‘Yeah!’

But didn’t she feel that, at least in part, her gift to my profession had help lose her party the 2005 election?

She laughed. ‘Ha! That’s the biggest joke going! Ha ha ha! Come on! It was certainly nothing to do with Dracula cartoons. But I think one of the interesting things is that “something of the night”, you don’t need to explain that to anybody.’

But didn’t she regret that Howard would now never get a knighthood, just because of the headlines that would inevitably follow?

‘What a lot of nonsense!’

True, that was meant as a joke, but it was quite clear now that I was going to get nothing out of Ann Widdecombe that she didn’t want to give. Which is her prerogative, I suppose. But I still had the cartoon, which was nearly finished. Not that I was too happy with that either — this was a rush job, to be done and dusted in just over 35 minutes, and what I’d drawn showed every danger of tipping over into Mo Mowlam. As I tried to drag it back to Widdecombe, I asked her about Cameron.

‘He’s winning, and that’s all that matters.’

And what was wrong with Gordon Brown?

‘He was never up to it in the first place.’

Did she think she’d have been up to it?

‘Yes! Ha! You weren’t expecting that, were you? You were expecting a modest disclaimer!’

But why wasn’t Brown up to it?

‘I think he can’t actually take the flak. Got to be able to.’

And now, finally, I was in a position to see if she, too, was really able to take the flak. I passed her the cartoon. She paused for the briefest of seconds, and then laughed and laughed. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha! You’ve made me look crosser. The eyes are crosser. That must have been when I was talking about Michael Howard. Ha ha ha! Caught the ageing quite well.’

And then she took the picture next door to show her secretaries. As I listen to their uproarious laughter, I realised forlornly that whatever I’d been trying to achieve by drawing and interviewing Ann Widdecombe, I’d utterly failed.