As it’s Friday, I’ll let you in on a little past-time we have here at Spectator Towers. My colleague Mary Wakefield and I often instigate ‘Dear Deidre’ reading sessions – whereby one of us reads out the letters sent into the Sun’s resident agony aunt, Deidre Sanders, while others say how they’d respond or guess at Deidre’s actual response. Sounds tragic, I know, but it’s fun nonetheless – and oddly heart-warming too.
These Dear Deidre sessions usually end with us commenting that the Tories should hire her as some kind of adviser on “family breakdown”. After all – with years of experience at this kind of thing – Deidre’s answers tend to be right on the money, and her series of “free leaflets” seems exhaustive too.
But, today, Labour have beaten the Cameroons to it. The Sun reports that:
BRITAIN’S favourite agony aunt has been signed up by the Government to help tackle the divorce crisis.
The Sun’s Deidre Sanders will advise ministers on how to support families hit by marital breakdown.
She has been asked to explore new initiatives to keep couples together — and help children when all else fails.I’m sure there’s an important point to be made here about the ‘government of all the talents’, but – whatever it is – it eludes me. So just to say: congratulations Deidre. And to let her know that there are plenty of people at The Spectator who’ll take over her agony aunt duties, if the workload gets too much.
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