I fell helplessly in love with Christine Hamilton

Scotland had the Macbeths and Romania had the Ceausescus. But while Tony and Cherie made a pretty good stab at it, in the annals of notoriety in British politics no husband and wife team can compare to the Hamiltons. Or at least it seemed like that in 1997, when allegations about cash for questions in brown envelopes catapulted Neil Hamilton, the relatively obscure MP for Tatton, into the eye of the storm about to overwhelm John Major’s government. The decision by the former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, in his white suit, to stand as an ‘anti-sleaze’ candidate in Tatton drove Hamilton’s wife Christine to confront him during a press conference on Knutsford Heath, hurling her into the maelstrom as well, and they duly enjoyed their 15 minutes of infamy.

However, as I found out when I arranged to meet and draw them both over lunch at the Gay Hussar Hungarian restaurant in Soho last month, it’s turned out to be a long 15 minutes.