Revealed: the Andy Coulson joke that Nick Clegg cut from his conference speech

Although Nick Clegg is under increasing pressure in some quarters to write a tell-all book about his time in coalition, the closest he has got to this so far is by signing up to an agency that has advertised his services for up to $55,000 per speech.

Happily, Clegg’s former speechwriter comes at no such cost. Phil Reilly has started a blog detailing his time working for the former deputy Prime Minister. In this, Reilly recalls a phone hacking joke he wrote for Clegg back in 2010:

‘For days, Nick Clegg had been toing and froing over whether he could tell a joke about Andy Coulson. It was September 2010 and I was writing my first ever speech for him, which he would give at the opening rally event of the party’s autumn conference. Coulson was still Cameron’s comms chief but was getting an increasing level of grief over the phone hacking that took place while he was the editor of the News of the World.