Tamzin Lightwater

My first bike

Have put my name down for a Team Cameron bicycle! If I don’t get one am going to see if I can get a slogan painted on the side of my Smart car. “I ♥ Dave”, “Proud to be Dave’s Babe”, “Grammar Schools are So Yesterday”. That sort of thing. Do feel bit sorry for

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 19 May 2007

MONDAY Am in severe shock. Just put the phone down from the Labour press office. Someone called ‘Bev’ rang to say she had found 15 inaccuracies in stories we briefed to the papers this weekend, including five major ‘porkers’ about Gordon’s economic record. She was v loud and bossy and went on and on about

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 12 May 2007

Everyone trying their best to look ‘socio-centric’ (Mr Letwin’s orders), but we are all secretly dreading this week. MONDAY Everyone trying their best to look ‘socio-centric’ (Mr Letwin’s orders), but we are all secretly dreading this week. Most of us have never known any other Leader. I will be glad when it’s over. Feels a

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 5 May 2007

Monday Jed in terrible mood. He’s been like it since last Wednesday when his bicycle broke down on the way to Stamford Bridge. I must say, I can’t quite work out how a bicycle can break down. I mean, what happens exactly? He had to keep texting the people waiting for him in the corporate

Tamzin on the trail

Greetings from Sheffield where yours truly has been put in charge of The Tory Revival In Our Great Northern Cities! Was feeling a bit down about things yesterday after a number of rather indiscreet comments from voters at the Meadowhall shopping centre about where I should put my lovely green leaflets but today things are

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 28 April 2007

MONDAY Phew! We’re back to just the one good-looking, charismatic David. All I can say is thank goodness for that! My mental health will be all the better for it and no doubt poor Mr Miliband’s will be, too. What a kerfuffle! He can bang on about his ‘I can’ philosophy all he likes, but

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 21 April 2007

MONDAY V annoyed. Am I the only one around here who hasn’t been offered a job at Google? Not a single phone call from a headhunter in the whole time I’ve been working my little Dolce & Gabbana boots off for the good of Modern Conservatism. The whole of CCHQ is downing tools and scuttling

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 14 April 2007

Monday Am going to get to the bottom of this Miliband unit if it’s the last thing I do. There’s something shifty about it, mark my words, although initial investigations are inconclusive. Kept eye on Poppy and James, and when they disappeared off to one of their ‘Special Meetings’ I followed them, crouching behind recycling

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 7 April 2007

MONDAYFeel dreadful. Had horrendous nightmare last night. Was sleeping fitfully when a ghostly form appeared above my bed. He was tieless, wearing a white, open-necked shirt (possibly Paul Smith), the sleeves billowing as he held out his arms in a Messiah-like way. He had dark hair, pale, gleaming skin and deep, piercing eyes. At first

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 31 March 2007

MONDAY What on earth is going on? Ever since Budget day there’s been a really strange atmosphere around here. Can’t put my finger on what’s wrong except to say — I know this is going to sound hysterical — I think there’s some sort of situation developing between Dave and Gids. It could be nothing

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 24 March 2007

Monday Forty-one per cent! Would be nice to celebrate, but of course we know this is out of the question. Mr Maude is in bad enough mood already, since his attempt at optimism went so badly wrong at Spring Conference. He’d been practising sounding ‘noncommittally cheerful’ all week with our Wellbeing Guru, Sherwood. Before he

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 17 March 2007

MONDAY I don’t know why everyone is getting so worked up about our lovely green taxes. If  they read the small print, they would see that what Gids takes away with one hand, he is quite literally going to give us back with the other. Every penny that he takes taxing your holiday flights (if

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 March 2007

MONDAY Off to New York with Dave and DD next week! Am working flat out on preps. First priority: which hotel? It’s the Four Seasons versus Soho House. While East 57th Street says ‘statesmen-in-waiting’, the Meatpacking District says ‘modern, vibrant and cool’. This is what Jed calls a Fork in the Road. Meetings set up

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 3 March 2007

MONDAY I know I should be excited about the move to Millbank — historic landslide here we come! — but I’d just got my desk next to Jed’s office. It’s taken months of ‘edging’ at rate of one centimetre a day. Now I’ll have to start all over again. It’s sad to be leaving our

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 24 February 2007

Monday OK, OK, I was wrong. (It does happen you know.) I may have been a teensy bit oversensitive about the whole ‘marriage’ thing. But I am now prepared to admit that it does seem that it may, after all, be the answer to everything. I cannot argue with statistics showing that hardly anybody on

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 17 February 2007

Monday Am fed up. It simply cannot be the case that everyone smoked cannabis at school. They’re clearly all just saying it to suck up to Dave. Head office unbearable. I’ve had it up to here with Moroccan black, red seal and ‘Maui wowie’. Well, I’m not going to lie. I have never smoked marijuana.

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 February 2007

Monday What a morning! Was having coffee with Jed’s new PA, Janice. Lovely lady. V spiritual — although some might say a bit severe-looking with the shaved head. Anyway, as Nigel says, she’s ‘taken a shine to me’. She tells me things that are troubling her and today she told me something’s going on which

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 3 February 2007

SUNDAY Hideous day of torment fielding non-stop calls from rude reporters asking, ‘What’s Dave got against Catholics?’ and ‘Does he support gay rights, or what?’ (We should go ahead with Gids’s plan to put the press through to a call centre in Delhi at weekends.) Was only just coping when Nigel rang to ask how the holding

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 27 January 2007

MONDAY The scariest thing was waiting for us in the meeting room this morning. It was a huge projected figure on the wall with the head of Shilpa Shetty and the body of Jade Goody. Jed marched in, stood in front of it and said, ‘Ideas?’ Everyone mute. Except Wonky Tom who can’t bear silences

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 20 January 2007

Monday Don’t ask me why, but suddenly the buzzword is ‘Thatcher’. Memo marked ‘Urgent’ says the T-word count for an average speech is now ten times minimum ‘until further notice’. Jed rushed into the office this morning all breathless and sweaty, and announced extra greenie points (frappuccino machine tokens, carbon offset holiday credits, soft loo-roll