I fell helplessly in love with Christine Hamilton

Martin Rowson

12 July 2008

In the second of an occasional series, Martin Rowson interviews Neil and Christine Hamilton. To his alarm, the arch-satirist finds himself warming to the disgraced couple

The Hamiltons have certainly undergone a remarkable rehabilitation, from National Jokes almost to National Treasures. You could probably describe this more accurately as an extraordinary gift for simple survival, so I suggested that it was all was down to Christine’s natural propensity to go at life like a bull at a gate. She cut across me, leaning over the table. ‘No, no, no, I’m not a bull at a gate. I’m more like an overfriendly labrador who just bounds up to people and starts licking them. I just can’t help it.’

I got the impression that Neil relishes the showbiz life less than his wife. He was once a serious politician, albeit with some pretty unsavoury views, whose behaviour may or may not have contributed to his own political destruction. Either way (and though I contributed gleefully to his harrying) he never started any illegal wars, and the bile that was heaped on him was out of proportion to what he was alleged to have done. And yet, like Christine, there’s a fatalism to Neil Hamilton: he happily admitted that his misfortune was to provide the kind of scapegoat the political zeitgeist demanded at the time.

Not that I particularly liked him. There’s still too much of the debating society smart-arse about him, endlessly spouting one-liners of varying levels of wittiness (‘Oh shut up, Neil!’). But that’s hardly a crime, and anyway, by now I was beginning to fall helplessly in love with his wife. Although dubbed a battle-axe by the media through no real fault of her own — beyond loyalty — she then played the hand she’d been dealt, and won. So unless she’s the most brilliantly duplicitous media manipulator in history, which I doubt, she may really be the pussycat she nervously admits to being on her website.

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pj

July 10th, 2008 7:06pm Report this comment

Remarkable how silent Bell has been durung the Blair years isn't it? A failed attempt to oust a Tory in Essex & then retirement from the political stage altogether. One can only presume he considers his task of driving corruption from Westminster to be complete.

David Short

July 12th, 2008 5:04am Report this comment

The headline seems inappropriate.

We never read anywhere about this love affair.

Anyway, why does the Spectator think the Hamiltons are worthy now of this cartoon and print attention?

Michael Lee

September 2nd, 2008 2:20pm Report this comment

This criticismwwhich we used to have of the
Hamiltons is usually made by people who have
never met them.If any man cannot be attracted
to Christine after talking to her he must be most
odd.

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