The first time I saw my name in print, in almost its own right, was in late 1997, after a person who was a friend, but isn’t one any more, called up Londoners’ Diary and told a young journalist who would later become a friend, but wasn’t one at the time, that I’d helped to organise a Cambridge student demonstration against tuition fees.
The first time I saw my name in print, in almost its own right, was in late 1997, after a person who was a friend, but isn’t one any more, called up Londoners’ Diary and told a young journalist who would later become a friend, but wasn’t one at the time, that I’d helped to organise a Cambridge student demonstration against tuition fees.
Obviously it was really about my dad, but I had a starring role. ‘His handsome son Hugo’, they called me, which I affected to find totally, like, demeaning, on account of the way I was a feminist, but was actually quite chuffed about. The justification for the piece, anyway, was that the Conservative party at the time had a certain view on tuition fees (which it later changed, and then changed again and then, although I’d have to check, possibly changed again) and here was the son of a man who used to be an MP but currently wasn’t one holding a banner which implied he didn’t entirely agree with it.
‘This is diary gold!’ they must have shouted on the desk. ‘Ditch the third item about Nicky Haslam!’ Ah, gossip journalism. ‘What a dreary, pointless job, where you have to write crap like that,’ I remember thinking to myself, vaguely, before falling into a stupor for the next eight years, and waking up doing it.
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