Character building

Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom.

Years ago, not long after Tony Blair’s first landslide, I was asked by London Weekend Television to co-write a sitcom. The idea was to satirise New Labour, and it was cunningly set, not in the Houses of Parliament, but in a flat nearby shared by three Labour MPs. It was a sort of political version of Craggy Island, as in Father Ted. There was the MP who didn’t give a damn and regarded loyalty to the party line as the sign of a wimp — he was loosely based on Bob Marshall-Andrews. There was a young woman loosely based on another Labour MP whom I won’t name; she was a slavish follower of whatever the leadership wanted her to say, do or think. And there was a Father Jack figure, a dotty, elderly member who had fought in the Spanish civil war.