When art imitates Wee Dougie Alexander

Is Labour MP Douglas Alexander paranoid or very candid? The Shadow Foreign Secretary told a group of luvvies and great minds at the Names Not Numbers festival in Suffolk that he may well be the inspiration behind Tom Hollander’s blundering character Simon Forrester, the anti-hero of In The Loop:

‘I had to admit that when the final shot was shown of In The Loop it was a bit of a Vietnam flashback for me because it involved a vertically-challenged, spectacularly incompetent international development secretary, and when that film hit the British screens I was the International Development Secretary!’

Rare modesty from a politician.