Philip Hammond’s transformation from goth to Chancellor

If only I’d known. If only I’d foreseen that the teenage classmate who strode through our school gates every morning, rolled-up Daily Telegraph tucked incongruously (and insouciantly) under one arm, dark leather trench-coat flapping rhythmically in sympathy with the long, swaying black crows-wings of shoulder-length hair, square-heeled boots clicking and clacking their way into morning assembly… if I’d somehow intuited, as I say, that this lanky 15-year-old with the questing, beaky nose and rimless glasses, this proto-goth, would one day be Chancellor of the Exchequer…

Well, actually, I wouldn’t have been remotely surprised. I don’t think any of us who knew Philip Hammond back in 1971 at Shenfield School in Essex would’ve been. Political destiny was written all over the guy.

Since Phil emerged as a major player in the high-rolling, high-risk casino world of Westminster politics, I’ve been approached by countless media outlets all wanting to know the same thing.

‘What was he like? Just how right-wing was he back then? Was he Tory Boy? Did you all hate him?’

I know what they want.