Thursday
Only my third day, and I must say that it isn’t so easy being a Tory press officer in the AD era — that’s After Dave (My joke!). People may think it’s all frappaccinos and solar panels at Victoria Street but the reality is pretty shocking, actually. There’s the District Line, for a start, with all those horrible smells (whoops! Memo to self: must be more ‘odour inclusive’). But Nigel says the real problem is we don’t know what to do with all this ‘popularity stuff’.
Today I have every national daily and most of the Sundays on the phone demanding the first interview with Sam about the new baby.
Nigel says she is the Madonna of the modern Tory party. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the mother of the baby Jesus or the pop star (Shireen’s daughter-in-law, apparently). I reckon he must mean Mrs Ritchie Jnr because Nigel is always saying proudly that ‘we don’t do God’ which, for the record, we all know is a line he’s nicked from Alastair Campbell, like all his best ones. Poppy says he’s got a ‘secret’ picture of Alastair in his top drawer. The other day he told poor Sebastian that he’s got ‘psychological flaws’. Poor Seb: he just likes to keep a tidy desk — so what if his pens are all perpendicular?
Friday
A memo has just gone round very sternly instructing us that the ‘Notting Hill set’ is ‘no longer a narrative we use or approve of’. Apparently it was never more than a media creation and we are not to use the term ever again, even in Starbucks. I can’t believe it. The first ‘in crowd’ I’ve ever been a member of and it’s being disbanded, just when I’ve got on to the first rung of the ladder.
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