Teamwork key as Neil an show their true colours o
Ruth Mosalski joined larger-than-life couple Neil and Christine Hamilton on the campaign trail for Ukip in Aberystwyth this week...
THEY are among the most controversial of the political figures campaigning in this year’s National Assembly election.
As the saying goes, behind every strong man is a stronger woman.
I’m not sure that’s ever been truer than of Neil and Christine Hamilton.
They are back on the campaign trail because former Tory MP Neil now wants to be a Ukip Assembly Member for the Mid and West Wales region.
Christine, whose Twitter handle is @brit_battleaxe, is the one ensuring he is in the right places at the right times, and, as he says, “so well turned out”.
Despite not having been his official secretary for decades, Christine still manages her husband’s diary and his press.
It’s a habit she can’t shake, despite the fact she admits it gives her a “bad press” for being “bossy”. Her husband prefers to call her “omnipresent”.
“I have to be like this,” she says, as she walks in front of him, passing badges and leaflets to prospective voters on the streets of Aberystwyth, where the couple get a mixed reaction.
As Christine walked up to one young family on the prom, she was told: “Don’t even think about talking to me,” and yet just minutes earlier she had been asked for a selfie by a woman in her thirties.
They occupy a rare position, partlight-entertainment celebrities, part-controversial political figures.
Neil lost his old Conservative seat of Tatton in Cheshire after his name became synonymous with allegations – which he has always denied – that he took cash for asking questions in Parliament.
Disastrously for his reputation, he was forced to abandon a libel action against the Guardian newspaper, leaving the paper free to publish a front-page headline which read “A liar and a cheat, official”.
But a different generation knows them better for their appearances on television.
Christine is a Masterchef and I’m a Celebrity contestant.
And the couple both appeared on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and in an infamous interview with Louis Theroux.
But the place Neil wants to be elected isn’t the sort of place where celebrity matters. However, the pair say their fame – or infamy – helps.
People know them, like them and will vote for Neil because of it.
They are a brand, we group them together because that’s how we have always known them and because, in Christine’s words, we’ve seen them in “lots of ludicrous situations”.
Twice already in this article I’ve written “The Hamiltons” and deleted it because Christine points out that she hates it.
“I know we are regarded as a brand, and collectively as ‘ The Hamiltons’ but we didn’t set out to be that,” she says.
“People are interested to meet us because of things other than politics.”
Neil’s anti-Europe views have long been known, and his Welsh ties are well-publicised. But why would you re-enter politics now?
As Neil points out, he’s 67, he could be doing anything.
Christine wants to finally book in her knee replacement and tend her vegetable beds, but here they are again, out on the streets.
She’s honest that the reason they’re here again is Neil, it was no desire of hers.
“I’m shackled to a political luna- tic,” she laughs.
But they wouldn’t change anything – any of the publicity or any of the stunts, she says.
“One of the things I love about the last 20 years, since Neil left Parliament, is we have lived a completely different life.
“I couldn’t have spent 20 years in the House of Commons.”
When we were setting up the interview, I really wasn’t sure where in Wales it would end up being held.
Once we’d narrowed it down to Tuesday morning in Aberystwyth, I could imagine the drill. But when I stop to check my messages halfway up the A487, I see Christine has suggested we go on a “jolly steam train”.
This was never going to be the type of interview that took six press officers, pre-vetted questions and a cameraman – that isn’t the Hamilton way these days.
What actually happened was a walk around the town and a coffee in Wetherspoons – the steam train will
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