To the Oldie literary lunch where Mr S dined alongside the magazine’s editor Alexander Chancellor and Alan Johnson.
Talk soon turned to Johnson’s former boss Tony Blair, as the Labour politician recalled a joke that backfired spectacularly.
‘Probably the reason why I fell out,’ Johnson said, before stopping himself and tactically rephrasing. ‘Alex and I have been talking a lot about Tony Blair, who I tell a lot of stories about but they are all true and they’re said with affection.’
‘But Tony didn’t like it when, do you remember when he had that heart problem and he had to go in to have an operation? Well, I was at the Young Fabians do that night and just by way of a laugh I said “Tony Blair’s got a dicky heart but with Bill Clinton it’s the other way round,” and I think that cost me in terms of my political advancement.’
With Johnson working on a new tome to follow on from his childhood memoir This Boy, more details of his relationship with Blair may soon be in the public sphere. ‘The next book will get onto the political career and the advice given to me by the civil service when I became health secretary,’ he told diners at the lunch at Simpsons in the Strand.
While Steerpike is assured it will be a riveting read, Mr S is reminded of an interview the former Home Secretary gave in 2013 in which he said that despite being offered a lot of money to tell the story of his political life, he was never going to go there.
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