Quentin Letts & Dominic Sandbrook
As the PM drops a bombshell, the Mail’s sketch writer says ...
OH Gawd, not more kitchen scenes! After the Milibands’ two-kitchens saga, last night the BBC took us to David Cameron’s constituency kitchen in Oxfordshire in the latest example of ‘Hello’ television political coverage.
It was there that the PM announced that he might not look for a third term in Downing Street.
Er, might be worth waiting until you’ve won a second one before you start talking about a third, comrade. What IS it about kitchens? Whatever, the BBC’s James Landale was shown chopping vegetables with the PM as lunch was prepared for the Cameron family.
The slinky Samantha, looking as though she was just out of some foam-scented bath, wandered towards the cooking area in a loose-fitting lumberjack shirt and announced that her husband was ‘definitely the best man for the job’. She added that ‘me and the family’ (did they not teach grammar at her public school?) kept him grounded.
Kept him in the kitchen chopping carrots, more like. But what a healthy lot the Cams are. Did you see those lettuce leaves in the colander? No wonder he has lost weight, poor man. Can a man really run a country on rabbit food?
This latest up- close-and-gooey film with a party leader – which came after the Miliband domestic epic disaster, and a little-noticed shocker with Nick Clegg and his parents – started with Mr Cameron on the touchline at a children’s football game in his Witney constit- uency. His son Elwen, aged nine, was playing. ‘Come on, Chads! Great save!’ bawled the PM, making sure the camera crew had a good view of him.
Mr Cameron said that he felt ‘fit enough’ for another term of the premiership, and would be gutted if he lost the election.
It was country casuals time. The aesthetic was one of Boden clothes and gummies and Chelsea tractors
in Oxfordshire lanes. In the kitchen it was Belfast sinks and nourishing stews.
Then came a moment from the Carry On films, surely. We followed Mr Cameron on a visit to his butcher. Chicken was on the shopping list.
Mr Cameron: ‘I like the thighs because they’re very juicy.’ Ooh, missus. Kenneth Williams or Frankie Howerd could not have delivered it better. The butcher did not seem entirely keen to take part in the political promo’. Reporter Landale enquired if ‘David’ was the shop’s most famous customer. No answer from the man with the sharp knife and bloody apron (borrowed from the PM after his last reshuffle?).
But Mr Cameron announced that one Jeremy Clarkson sometimes visited the butcher. So now we know where Clarkson gets his old beefs.
Talking of the Top Gear presenter, Mr Cameron disclosed that his daughter Nancy, 11, had threatened that very morning to go on a hunger strike if Clarkson was dropped by the BBC. Oops.
Tricky moment for Landale and his editors. But to their credit they kept it in. Mr Cameron said he had told Nancy that this was ‘not exactly Gandhi’ (a reference to the emaciated Indian Mahatma who used to fast in protest at British imperialism).
Later we learned that Nancy had tucked into a hearty lunch, so her hunger strike had ‘lasted five minutes’, said her father. Longer than some election promises, darling.
Kitchens update: Not to be outdone, ITV earlier in the day gave us an interview from the sparse wee scullery of gnashertoothed Scots Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon. It looked about as warm and inviting as the sea off Aberdeen.