Is this Premier Inn all I’ll be remembered for?

It’s fairly commonplace for people to wonder what, if anything, they’ll be remembered for. I’m going to be 59 later this year, so it’s been preying on my mind. Will it be the self-deprecating memoir I wrote about failing to take Manhattan? The schools I helped set up? The Free Speech Union? The answer, I’m afraid, is none of the above. I’ve just received an email from Google that has conclusively answered this question – and it’s not good news.

According to the email, I added a location to Google Maps on 4 October 2017 that has been viewed 24 million times. Now, I might take some satisfaction from this if the place in question was a charming, out-of-the-way pub or an historic building. But it was the Manchester City Centre branch of the Premier Inn. I dimly recall that I struggled to find this godforsaken hostelry at the 2017 Conservative party conference and, when I eventually did, added it to Google Maps so others wouldn’t have the same problem. It must have taken all of five minutes, but it’s now the most viewed thing I’ve ever done.

Contrast that with the recording on Vimeo of When Boris Met Dave, a 90-minute Channel 4 docudrama that I co-wrote and co-produced with Lloyd Evans about the political rivalry between the two. That must have taken us the best part of a year to make and yet it’s only been viewed 6,015 times. I did slightly better with the YouTube video of my first and only attempt at stand-up (134,849 views) and better still with the video I made in The Spectator’s basement about why we should leave the EU (243,385). But none of these comes close to 24 million.