If Harold Pinter’s plays are about the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, Matthew Parris’s autobiography is about the butchered segment of electrical cable that lies on the dusty roof of the throne of the Speaker of the House of Commons. For several decades this piece of copper wire, unused, long-neglected, has rested above the heads of Bernard Weatherill, Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin, and no one has noticed it except for the eagle-eyed former parliamentary sketchwriter for the Times up in the press gallery.
It’s the perfect example of a Parris observation. Take something grand, respected, highfalutin, like parliament, and show quite how lowfalutin and dull it really is. And do all this in a teasing but kind tone – one critic described Parris as ‘the young Anglican curate in cycle-clips who can make respectable ladies laugh with his cheeky double entendres but steers clear of anything interesting enough to be seriously rude.’
Parris is masterly at applying the bathetic, wine-into-water touch to his own life. To the outside world, his career is a row of ticks in establishment boxes – the sort of CV that Jeffrey Archer would think too OTT to invent even for himself, but would just about do for the hero of one of his novels: top of his Swaziland school, Cambridge, Yale scholarship, Foreign Office fast stream, correspondence secretary to Margaret Thatcher, MP at 29, Weekend World presenter and then top Times journalist.
In his own eyes, though, Parris has been a failure in all these departments, except for his current job. It’s clearly untrue; real failure at any stage would not have led to the next illustrious position. But, still, it’s a useful attitude; because he’s so down on himself and because he’s moved from job to job and so doesn’t have to keep anybody sweet, he becomes the perfect autobiographer.
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