Rishi’s not the only chap in Britain to know that men are the only ones who can load the Zanussi
RISHI Sunak, Prime Minister and domestic skivvy, has disclosed that he sometimes abandons affairs of state at 10 Downing Street and nips upstairs to make the marital bed.
With his wife Akshata being a little lax on the domestic side, Mr Sunak must also stack the dishwasher, walk the dog and supervise his daughters’ dietary habits, even while trying to run the country.
Boris Johnson, Gordon Brown and the Duke of Omnium never had to face such household demands. I’m not sure Boris has ever made a bed, though he may, over the years, have bounced up and down on a few.
Glimpses of the Sunaks’ home life came in an interview the Prime Minister and his wife vouchsafed to Grazia magazine. They were filmed on a sofa in the private quarters at No 10. Mrs Sunak, who has a touchingly distrait air, claimed that she deserved ‘an A for enthusiasm’ when it came to loading dishwashers but that whenever she had a bash at it, ‘Rishi comes in and rearranges it’.
Her husband, not the only chap in Britain to know that men are the only ones who can load the Zanussi, explained that although this doubled the work it meant that ‘more goes into the machine as a result’. The quest for greater efficiencies: it is the leitmotif of his premiership.
BILLIONAIRE’S daughter Mrs Sunak gave a goofy smile and hugged her beloved’s left arm. In home life as in politics, Mr Sunak has discovered that if you want a job doing well you must do it yourself. Michael Heseltine once vowed to intervene before breakfast and before lunch.
Mr Sunak must wait until mealtimes are completed and the plates have been rinsed before he can leap into action. Mrs Sunak was hopeless about making the bed. Rishi said: ‘It bugs me, so I actually sometimes come up back into the flat from the office just to make the bed, because I will be irritated if it isn’t made.’
Mrs Sunak, innocent as Glynis Johns’ Mrs Banks in the film Mary Poppins, gazed at her consort and gasped, ‘it’s one of his special skills’.
But not his only one! On cooking, Rishi had ‘more talent in that department’ than she.
His signature dish was Gordon Ramsay’s scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning. The recipe calls for the addition of creme fraiche, chives and, perhaps like this interview, a heavy application of butter.
On planning family meals, ‘Rishi lays out the structure,’ admitted Mrs Sunak.
She took the civil service approach whereby the minister sets strategic goals and mandarins are entrusted with delivery. Sure enough, his stipulations on protein, carbs and vegetables went ignored. ‘ There’s no meal, unless I’m here, that operates like that,’ sighed Mr Sunak.
For her it was spin-class indoor cycling, book- reading and organising the girls’ Christmas presents. For him it was nuclear warfare threats one moment, Marigolds the next. He hated having to take out the rubbish – ‘such a hassle’.
They no longer had time, as happened in ‘the good old days’, to go out together for a run. Mr Sunak also expressed sadness that his daughters, aged 12 and 11, no longer believed in the Elf On The Shelf. This is an American answer to Father Christmas.
Did the Sunaks offer their children inducements to help with household chores? Mrs Sunak baulked at the idea but her husband was more open to negotiation and confessed that he sometimes threw them, and Nova their Labrador, the occasional snack. An electoral bribe, such things are called at Westminster. We learned, furthermore, that he seldom took up a book. At the end of a working day he was so exhausted that all he could manage was another episode of the TV show Friends.
It was, of course, pure chance that the Grazia interview, overlaid with zingy music and graphics, offered an image of the Sunaks quite different from that alleged by Labour MPs who habitually slander the couple as spoilt plutocrats.