Sally Bercow gives ‘The Speaker’s Wife’ a miss

Although Quentin Letts has made it clear that his new novel The Speaker’s Wife is fictional, the satirical tome has set tongues-wagging in Westminster. Chris Bryant wrote in his Guardian review that ‘the person who is most recognisable from today’s Westminster’ is the novel’s clerk of the house — Sir Roger Richards —  ‘whose real-life counterpart Sir Robert Rogers resigned last year’.

So what do other Westminster residents make of the book? Mr S couldn’t help but raise the topic when he bumped into the current Speaker’s Wife Sally Bercow at last night’s night’s Champagne Life private view at the Saatchi Gallery.

Has Sally had a chance to read the book about an ambitious backbencher — with plans to be Speaker — and his colourful wife? ‘I haven’t read Quentin’s book,’ Bercow tells Mr S. ‘I have no interest in reading that man, he’s never been very supportive of us.’ Given that Quentin once described her husband as a ‘vindictive pillock’, she may well be onto something.