A Notting Hill Nobody at Noel

Monday

Now I know why they call it the unhappiness agenda. Am suicidal. I never want to have anything to do with ‘social justice’ again. I shouldn’t have even been at the press conference, but Dave was nervous after things went a bit nuclear at the weekend, so nothing left to chance.

Captain Smithy — Mr IDS-Pod himself — was wired up with a team backstage shouting answers into his ear. Afterwards, his people asked if I wanted to join them for a late lunch. What could be nicer, I thought, imagining a cabbage and beetroot smoothie in one of the usual hangouts. Well! Call me Ms Picky, but I just don’t think it’s very appropriate to get blotto in London’s most exclusive restaurant after launching a report on poverty and addiction.

And the conversation! Interrupted once to say I didn’t think gay people were irrelevant. ‘Come off it!’ they all shouted. ‘How many of their lot with kids do you know? Woolly wooftas with kids?’ I said my good friend Aileen in Wibberley village, whose partner Erica has twins from a previous marriage to whom Aileen is now ‘Mummy Two’.

This made everyone fall about laughing. One of them had food coming out of his nose. Am I missing something? We never laugh at things like this at head office.

Then one of them leaned over me and said ‘Don’t tell me you’re into f****** glaciers. Smart girl like you? You should come and join the Real Conservatives.’ Then he fell off his chair. I said that if by ‘glaciers’ he meant the ecological necessity for changing our personal behaviour to meet the generational challenge of climate change, then yes, I was into them, thank you. Then I stormed out.