Ed Vaizey

A great piece in today’s Guardian magazine by Jon Ronson, going behind the scenes of the successful quiz show, Deal or No Deal.  It contains the following surreal interview between Ronson and Noel Edmonds’ the quizmaster, which could be a scene from Extras.

Noel:  I wrote to the cosmos that I would like to meet a woman who will make me laugh and make me happy..I wrote that I’d like a relationship that’s not too heavy, with an attractive lady, and I’d like her to walk into my life by the end of September 2005.  And she did!”

There is a short silence.

“She wasn’t the person who sold her story to the Sunday People back in July, was she”, I ask.

There’s another short silence.

“Yes”, says Noel. 

I spent Friday night in Witney, speaking to David Cameron’s supper club.  I accepted for three reasons - first, because they said I was being asked back “by popular demand” ; secondly, it is great fun; and thirdly…well the clue is in the first sentence.

I spent most of the last three months wishing I had said no.  It turned out I had accepted for “Trafalgar Night”, where the last three speakers had been the former Commodore of the Royal Yacht, the head of maritime history at the Defence Academy, and the historian Andrew Roberts.  Apparently Andrew (who spoke standing on a chair for some reason) talked on the death of Nelson, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  Great.

Anyway, I had a plan.  I simply e-mailed Andrew and asked him for every Trafalgar lecture he had, except for the one on the death of Nelson.  Unfortunately my plan backfired when he was unable to help.    Great.

The day was saved by Kate Williams’ superb biography of Emma Hamilton which I picked up in Wallingford’s excellent bookshop, and so I regaled Witney with the details of Nelson’s torrid love affair - kind of Kate Moss meets (General) Mike Jackson.   There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  Thanks Kate, I owe you one.

The web site theyworkforyou.com provides MPs - or more accurately their researchers - with hours of fun, as it logs the number of votes MPs attend, the number of times they speak and the number of questions they put down.  Now my researcher has discovered they test the “readibility” of your speeches, using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test.  According to this test, my speeches are suitable for 17-18 years and upwards.  This is the same as Oliver Letwin (good), better than David Cameron, who manages 15-16 (the same as Dennis Skinner), but worse than Michael Gove, who gets up to 18-19.  Annoyingly, the highest score my researcher has found is for Nick Clegg, who manages a staggering 19-20.  But then he does speak four languages.

Sky is leading its news bulletin with the proposals from the Conservative Tax Commission.  The person they have asked to give an objective and considered analysis?  Ed Balls.

A few weeks back, I reconfigured my (very small) office, thus freeing up wall space for the display of art.  I fondly imagined nipping down the the Parliamentary Art Collection and picking out a Hockney or two, an Auerbach, a Kossoff, an Uglow (twentieth century British art is my preferred area).  Imagine my disappointment to find that the parliamentary art collection has only about three of four rather undistinguished prints form the twentieth centuryt and a lot of nineteenth century cartoons.  This is a tragedy, not just for me, but for the nation.  The parliamentary arts committee must high-tail it to the Frieze art fair to pick up some twenty-first century iconic art, pronto.

A good friend of mine and fellow MP delivered a book for our little boy.  It is about a Duck that runs for office, eventually becoming President.  When I bumped into my friend, the following conversation took place:

Me:  Thanks for the book, it’s great, I read it last night

MP friend: Has Joseph read it?

Me: Er, he’s only three weeks old

MP Friend:  We started reading to our little one when he was four weeks old.

Yikes!  I’m not being pushy enough! 

My good friend Angie Bray was selected over the week end for the new seat of Ealing and Acton.  Angie is the leader of the Greater London Assembly, and is a formidable politician.  She will make an excellent MP.  At the moment, the political scribes say that the seat is a “terrifyingly close” three-way marginal, with a notional 56 vote Conservative majority!

Apparently the seat becomes Conservative as the current seat loses “Labour leaning Shepherd’s Bush”.  I take exception to this as we are just leaving Notting Hill for Shepherd’s Bush.  We decided to move there because Toby Young keeps going on about it - only to learn he is moving to Acton!  

I’ll be on The Wright Stuff all next week with Lowri Turner (cue comment from The Daily Pundit).  Tomorrow we are planning to debate “Muslim apartheid” and the proposed changes to the rape laws.  Friday’s guest is supposed be George Foreman - now there’s a real celebrity.

I am worried that no one reads this blog, as I get very few comments.  

However, I was reassured by two events last week.  Alan Milburn came up to me and asked me to stop being nice about him, as it was “very unhelpful”.  And the FT referenced my Tea with Cherie post in Thursday’s paper.

So people are reading my blog.  So I will have to start worrying that they are not leaving comments because it is too dull

The Daily Telegraph hates David Cameron, because he is young and embraces the future.  Now they have appointed a new editor.  His name is Will Lewis and he is, er, young (37) and embraces the future.

I had lunch with Will Lewis a few months ago.  On the way there, I was feeling this was a bit of a duty lunch, not helped by having to schlep into the City.  In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Will is utterly charming, interesting and engaging and a thoroughly nice bloke. (You can tell I’m sucking up here, but it’s also true, as I think the profiles show.) 

Will is part of the “Bristol set”, which is far more well-connected than the Notting Hill Set, comprising as it does top financial PRs, TV moguls and business tycoons who were all at Bristol University in the late 80s.  Expect to see a few articles detailing the links in this new establishment.

It will be interesting to see what Will (note I have put myself on first name terms) does at the Telegraph.  His brief is to make the Telegraph more technology friendly with podcasts and the like.  Lots of newspaper types are worried by the internet.  The reason is that they don’t understand it.  Too many are trying to reproduce their papers on line.  Wrong.  Instead, they should see the opportunity to build web sites using their brand.  Have a great sports website, a great business news site, a great politics site etc., and build from there.

Papers like the Telegraph should also be buying blogs.  Now, I know this goes against the grain a bit, as blogs are meant to be anti-establishment.  But the Telegraph  pays its dead wood columnists something like £300,000 a year.  For the same money, they could probably buy Iain Dale’s site, but they would have to give him complete editorial freedom for it to work.  The traffic to his site could then be “monetized” through advertising and promotion, and links to the rest of the Telegraph empire.  It would also attract younger readers. 

All very simple.  Not that I could do Will’s job of course.  Or that I am insanely jealous.