Diary

Emily Maitlis

Wednesday, 4th July 2007

High tea with George Bush in the Oval Office.

Milo, aged two, has developed a fixation with Spartacus, introduced to him by his nanny. I’m delighted, in a pushy Notting Hill-mother way, although struggling to recall who Spartacus was. Mark, his father, is not impressed. Spartacus, he reminds me, was the Roman initiator of the Slaves’ Revolt, fomenter of the Uprising. But he is possibly reading more into the situation than it warrants when he tells me he believes this is our long-suffering nanny’s way of asking for a pay rise and that she is about to leave us. I begin a frenzied scouring of our Greco-Roman glossary in panic. But the situation miraculously resolves itself. Spartacus, it turns out, is actually a cartoon superhero called Sportacus who Saves the Planet. His best friend is Stephanie. She has Barbie-pink hair and Barbie-pink shoes and the kind of dress that makes Zandra Rhodes look like a home secretary. On Thursday Milo announces he no longer dreams of being Spart/Sportacus. He wants to be Stephanie instead. Mark, his father, is not impressed.

I am presenting News 24 from outside Parliament as Tony Blair quits the stage and Gordon Brown shuffles in. It is momentous, it is emotional, but more than anything, it is wet. It reminds me of a day, exactly ten years ago, when I witnessed and reported on another handover of power — as Hong Kong was returned to China. Then, as now, the driving rain seemed to compound the very Britishness of the occasion. We never knew if Chris Patten was crying, or if a carefully positioned raindrop merely lent the shot more poignancy. At home, Milo is watching. ‘Why is Teddy Bear leaving?’ He asks Mark. ‘Mummy just said Teddy Bear was leaving Sedgefield.’ Why he gets the name of a remote Durham constituency right I will never fully understand.

And so, finally, to a charity do for Breast Cancer Haven that I am hosting with Rory Bremner. During drinks beforehand I spy Andrew Roberts. I blush and tell him how much I am enjoying his book.

Emily Maitlis is a BBC newsreader and a contributing editor of The Spectator.