Laughed at

Once again, at 12 noon today, Prime Minister’s Questions appeared on BBC2. Instead of the Prime Minister, Harriet Harman substituted, exchanging jokes with William Hague (who seemed to have filled the Opposition camera frame with women, so that a reasonably youthful and gender-inclusive image was created). In the introduction to PMQs, Daily Politics co-presenter Jenny Scott regretted that Liberal-Democrat Leader Nick “Cleggover” was not participating (a pun on “leg-over” which is a United Kingdom colloquial expression for sexual congress - a reference to Nick Clegg’s claim in GQ magazine to have had thirty sexual partners).



Nick Clegg was very foolish to have answered a variation of the Britney Spears “are you still a virgin” question, as he has opened up a narrative path for other journalists to follow. Does “under thirty” mean “29 sexual partners and counting”, in which case when will he reach number thirty? And who (one can imagine the Editor of The Sun asking) are these thirty or so women, and what are the thirty or so stories they have to tell?

British political sex “scandals” sell newspapers. And by boasting (for it obviously was a sort of boast) of thirty conquests Nick Clegg has just handed over to the media the potential for thirty episodes in a long-running saga that could possibly keep going through the summer season (“so assuming he started in 1983 when he was sixteen and stopped when he got married in 2000 he was changing sexual partners on average every seven months - that’s a lot of f--k buddies even for a politician…”). If he was a poor lover he will be laughed at; if he was a great lover he will be admired and laughed at; if it turns out to be mostly fantasy and fabrication (since his claim is well above the global average) he will be jeered and laughed at.



A quick look through the files upstairs reveals that David Miliband gave an interview to GQ magazine two years ago. It is a model of sober propriety, conducted by Darius Sanai (an alumnus of City University’s Journalism course). GQ magazine is part of Condé Nast which is run by Nicholas Coleridge (from the same family as the poet Samuel Coleridge) the ultra-civilised pro-Indian former employer of one of the Barnett sisters (and in a very oblique connection with the Nick Clegg interview, one of Nicholas Coleridge’s novels was nominated for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award - possibly this has set an unintended “culture” at the magazine group).

More on Harriet Harman: http://www.harrietharman.org/

More on William Hague: http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&personID=4680

More on Nick Clegg: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7324541.stm
and also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/01/nickclegg.pressandpublishing
and also
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article984233.ece

More on the average number of sexual partners: http://www.durex.com/cm/gss2004Content.asp?intQid=401