Diary - 12 July 2003 | The Spectator

I am summoned to No. 10 for a one-on-one with the Prime Minister. These ‘landscape chats’, as his spin doctors call them, are, of course, strictly off the record. But I don’t think I am breaking a confidence in revealing that, as we sit on the terrace outside the Cabinet room, I witness a seriously tribal side to Mr Blair which has been obscured in previous encounters. Making small talk about football, I mention that my father played for Newcastle United in his youth. The effect of this revelation upon the First Lord of the Treasury – a lifelong Toon fan – is nothing short of electric. It is as if I have employed some esoteric Masonic handshake. ‘I had no idea!’ he exclaims. Well, to be fair, why should he? I mean, Dad doesn’t go on about his days in the black-and-white strip, and Mr Blair has the country to run. At the end of our chat, the Prime Minister reveals my father’s footballing past to several bemused members of his staff, who have doubtless been spending the afternoon trying to sort out the NHS or to locate Saddam. But, for a misty-eyed moment, their grinning boss is miles away, back on the terraces of St James’.

I am sorry to hear that Canon Jeffrey John has decided not to take up his appointment as Bishop of Reading. He always seemed a very pleasant and scholarly man when he was Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford. As I recall, his homosexuality was never a source of controversy. There was, it must be said, some debate over whether he actually believed in God.