Andrew Roberts

Diary – 21 June 2003

An egregious piece of sucking-up garners you your present Diary

issue 21 June 2003

To Gateshead to appear on Question Time last Thursday with Nick Brown, Tom Strathclyde, David Steel and Janet Street-Porter. Until the show is filmed at 8.30 p.m., Nick Brown, the Minister for Work, hasn’t been told that he is being sacked in the reshuffle. He certainly doesn’t seem to betray any nervousness as we wander over the rather splendid Millennium bridge there, discussing Rupert Everett’s excellent portrayal of Charles I in the otherwise dire new movie To Kill a King. Did No. 10 wait until Question Time was safely over before they broke the news? And, if so, why did they specifically ask for him to go on the show after the chief whip Hilary Armstrong had pulled out because of the reshuffle? One for the Questing Vole, I think.

Speaking of regime change, surely we ought to be asking Saddam to come back and rule Iraq again because we haven’t found any WMDs.

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