V sad… No, it’s no good, I can’t talk like that. Only she can, which is why the retirement of Tamzin Lightwater is very sad because she is so much funnier than I could ever be. I know this because I once saw an irate posting on the internet under the heading ‘Who is Tamzin?’, by a man outraged by the suggestion that she might be me. This was ridiculous, he said. Tamzin was funny and clever which proved she could never be a woman, least of all that ghastly Melissa Kite. Well, I can understand that. Tamzin had a lot of extremely loyal followers who were intensely protective of her.
Since she announced her retirement — and my involvement — I have been inundated with (v lovely) messages from people begging me to bring her back. I feel so guilty because when she told me she wanted to wind up her Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody I did not argue. I knew how busy she had become since taking up a key role in No. 10.
She was also, I can reveal, finding it increasingly tricky to describe the goings-on of coalition government. In many ways, she told me, it just wasn’t funny any more.
Having surfed the curve of Compassionate Conservatism, giving her readers a weekly potted guide to life in the cappuccino haze of CCHQ — the Tie Guidelines, the smoothies, the U-turns on U-turns — she really did not think it her business to try to make sense of the equally bizarre but infinitely less charming Camer-Clegg regime.
We both feel incredibly bad for letting her fans down. But if it makes her kind readers feel any better, no one feels more bereft at this moment than me. For four years she has been at my side, my best friend and ally, the person who more than anyone else understood what it was like to work in the rough and tumble world of politics.
I feel like I have lost a sister. My parents are distraught at losing contact with the girl they adopted as a second daughter. They were in the habit of ringing her every week from the shires to give her suggestions of pressing issues she might highlight.
I have taken quite a bit of flak for her from Dave. In the weeks after the diary started, there were fevered rumours about who she was. Matthew d’Ancona, the then Spectator editor, and I agreed that when asked he would simply say it was not him. Despite this, a claim that it was me found its way into the newspapers and one of Cameron’s female press aides was dispatched to find out if it was true. She invited me to a bar in Westminster for what was ostensibly a bit of girly bonding. She rushed in late, stylishly dressed and breathless. Barely had I taken a sip out of my drink than she said: ‘So, are you Tamzin?’ My guileless heroine could not have done it better. In fact, if anything, the reality surpassed the fiction.
This happened a lot. Tamzin would often write what I felt was a ridiculous account of her adventures at the heart of the Notting Hill project. I would say to her: ‘Look, really, this time you’ve gone too far. Not even Dave and his pals would have a Tranquillity Room to chill out in.’ Then Cameron would announce that he was no longer measuring the economy by GDP, but by GWB, or General Wellbeing.
Tamzin broke stories too, because as soon as she became established the tips started to pour in, whether to her email, Facebook account, or to other journalists at the Spectator who would be asked to pass them on. Some were straightforward. Others were preposterously defamatory, sheer dynamite. Either they were true, or some serious grudges were being waged.
Tamzin never made a direct accusation of course. But if she received a tip about a leading Tory having a tempestuous affair she would insert a few choice jokes about him risking his marriage tax break. Or if she was told that a senior MP had been involved in a drunken punch-up she would reveal how poor Mr So-and-So had been locked in the Tranquillity Room again.
Her biggest scoops probably sounded so bizarre that no one even realised they were true, like the time she revealed that Grant Shapps had ordered an elephant for the Ealing by-election campaign — the Tory candidate Tony Lit was to have travelled atop it but the project was scuppered by health and safety. As I say, the Cameroons were beyond parody. The truth was much stranger than fiction.
Unsurprisingly, those members of Dave’s inner circle who suspected me became a little hostile. A Tory MP once came up to me at a party to demand: ‘What the hell’s going on? Why are we all being ordered never to speak to you?’
I told him I had a vague idea, but couldn’t say. He said something generous to the effect that he would speak to me if he wanted to because he and I go back years and it would have been absurd for him to ignore me because of an order from Gary — sorry, I mean Andy Coulson.
The only thing I really found difficult was Tamzin’s attitude to a lot of people I rate. John Redwood, for example, was lampooned mercilessly for his ‘crazy’ talk about cuts. But, for the record, this was her opinion, not mine. Although I tried to talk her round, she just did not have an appetite for instinctive Tory policies on tax, and the idea of spending cuts made her shiver. She was always happiest when helping Dave hone a speech about hoodies or when formulating policy papers on chocolate oranges. So in the end, we agreed to disagree on such matters.
We did, however, agree on ponies. Tamzin’s beloved Sesame, for those who like trivia, is very much a real horse. She is a palomino mare who until recently occupied the stable directly opposite my horse Tara in Surrey. Four years ago, I asked her owner, a young girl called Annie, if she would mind me using her for a project I was working on. I have never been able to tell her what column her horse has been starring in, until now. So if you’re reading, Annie, thanks so much for the loan of Ses. She’s been a star.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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