 | | Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo |
It was with great difficulty that I dragged my art school educated, leftie, socialist husband along to spend a sell out evening with Michael Portillo at Harrogate Theatre, and it was with huge enjoyment that I then watched him squirm amidst a sea of middle class England. Not being a political animal, I had no vested interest in the proceedings (unlike 98% of the audience) and was fully prepared for a burst of rhetoric aimed primarily at the labour party, but I have to say that on this occasion, I was pleasantly surprised. | "I was fully prepared for a burst of rhetoric aimed primarily at the labour party, but I have to say that on this occasion, I was pleasantly surprised" | |
To say that Mr Portillo was both funny and self-deprecating would be an understatement. My abiding memory of him as a politician was his humiliation in the 1997 general election, but with the vigour of a seasoned raconteur he opened with this very subject recalling how it was voted by Observer readers and Channel 4 viewers as ‘their third favourite moment of the twentieth century,’ thereby turning an unfortunate incident completely on its head. Even my husband laughed, disarmed as he was by a man who has pretty much done or seen it all. From then on we were off, from electoral defeat to the perils of playing a single mother, his father’s struggles with the Spanish Civil War and his own early venture into politics. There was the odd Labour induced jibe, mostly at the expense of John Prescott, which was only to be expected, but on the whole the evening was remarkably objective, with Michael showing immense sympathy for the isolation and loneliness of those at the top, pulling as they did ‘at levers that were not connected to anything.’ After a second half dedicated to a question and answer session, I left the theatre with a smile on my face, glad that I had decided to pass the time. With a husband, who, in a jumper and shirt, had somehow managed to blend into the crowd, I also started to wonder whether an appreciation of the Conservative party was something that appeared with age! Hazel Smith |
