Unfortunate timing for ambitious new Tory MP Alan Mak to be turned over by the Times today, after he was on the order paper to ask a prominent question at PMQs.
Mr S’s fellow diarist at the Times wrote this morning:
‘Alan Mak (Conservative, Havant) has been an MP for only a month and already his self-promotion is getting up people’s noses. Bad enough to send his maiden speech to everyone in Downing Street, he then baggsed the seat behind David Cameron for last week’s prime minister’s questions and with it a brief TV appearance.’
Now Mr S hears there was a concerted effort today not to let Mak take up his new found favourite spot before PMQs. A colleague laments: ‘Mak hadn’t managed to to bagsy his usual seat up the PM’s backside for the first time today.’
Still, he did at least manage to ask his question:
I have never been a big fan of my own name. The name ‘Nigel’ has romantic origins – it means ‘dark champion’ in Celtic lore and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle titled one of his dashing medieval historical novels Sir Nigel. But by the time of my birth the name had become indelibly associated with cerebrally
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