The exhibition runs at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre until 13 May

Who?
Gavin Shuker, the shadow water and waste minister and the youngest serving frontbencher in Parliament, until Chloe Smith stole that claim to fame. He is also the MP for Luton South, a cat-owner and a good cook – or so he claims.

The restaurant
Cabana
A new Brazilian barbecue restaurant near Covent Garden that offers street foods, flame-cooked meats brought to your table, frozen yoghurts and fruity cocktails. The founders describe it as an attempt to “share a bit of the real Brasil”.

The menu
Starter ‘Brasilian’ cheesy dough balls, Chicken coxinhas.

Main course Chimichurri black gold rump, spicy malagueta tiger prawns, butterflied port tenderloin with parmesan crust, chilli and cumin lamb, biro-biro rice, black beans.

We drank
Cool colada spiked with cachaça, Bacana berry.

We discussed

Being a young MP I’ve just turned 30. I was 28 when I came in – the fifth or sixth youngest, something like that. I didn’t have a back-of-an-envelope plan to be an MP. Margaret Moran was caught in the expenses scandal and, quite rightly, she wasn’t allowed to stand again. Forty-four people applied for the seat. Just being the candidate was really unlikely. You could get odds of 5/1 the day before [the election] that we wouldn’t win, which I didn’t do otherwise I would be really rich right now. We’re weird people, us MPs. I got asked what I wanted for Christmas and I said a suit carrier.

Marriage Lucy and I met in Cambridge. I proposed in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t want to do anything too exclusive for the wedding so we found a farm with a barn and did an open invite. We just asked everyone to bring a picnic. It rained though, and everyone was crammed into this barn with chickens flying around. Lucy got married in wellies because it was so wet.

Twitter I don’t really have much of a Twitter strategy. It occurred to me the other day that perhaps if I thought about it, I would be a more effective shadow sewage minister or something like that! Tweet really interesting facts about sewage…

Being shadow water and waste minister I shadow a number of Defra ministers. Richard Benyon is the most interesting one. I honestly think he is the best minister in Defra. There you go – there’s a claim! Basically, the way they appointed the Defra ministers this time round is that if you own enough of the country, you get to be a Defra minister. It’s not massively high profile but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. The department came out on Boxing Day in favour of hunting and the Countryside Alliance attacked them for raising it. I don’t know how it is even possible to get the Countryside Alliance against you on that issue!

Ed Miliband’s popularity I am a true Ed Miliband believer, so there’s my disclaimer. You’ve got to have a message and be able to cut through but you’ve also got to choose the ground on which you want to fight. I look back over the last year and see it as a necessary year in picking the ground we want to fight on. People laughed when he talked about the squeezed middle, but actually I think that’s where the next election’s going to be. I am a founder member of the Do Not Underestimate Ed Miliband Club and I’ll be the last guy in the bunker.

Religion With five other people who went to Cambridge, I started a church from scratch in Luton. That’s what we moved back to do – as you do! There are about 40 people now. My religion is not private for me and that’s a choice. The next century is going to be more religious than the last if you look at the demographic changes. That means we’ve got to grapple with some difficult stuff.

Perfect for
Meat-lovers. The ideal venue for a staff night out without busting the bank (although you might bust a few buttons – wear your ‘eating’ trousers!).

Not suitable for
A formal working lunch or vegetarians. The music is loud, the cocktails are strong and the food is messy.

The cost

Main course skewers are priced between £3.35-£5.95. Alcoholic cocktails start at £4.90.

To book a table at Cabana in Covent Garden, visit www.cabana-brasil.com or call 020 7632 9630

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Parliamentary shelf-stackers
My MP and I were walking down the High Street in the constituency when he saw a member of the local party who is a bit overly affectionate with him. My MP quickly pulled me into the nearest shop – a charity shop  – until the lady passed by. The staff in the shop recognised my MP and seemed quite taken aback by seeing him perusing (or pretending to peruse) the secondhand book section. We chatted to them for a bit and given that there was no imminent diary pressure, he even helped stack a few shelves before shamelessly posing for a photo.

A catastrophically chatty cabbie
My MP returned from London one evening to the constituency to attend an awards evening hosted by a local charity. I met him at the train station as we planned to go together. We jumped into a taxi and set off through the town to the venue. The slight problem was that our taxi driver recognised who was in the back of his taxi. He subjected my MP to a volley of abuse about the economy, expenses and the NHS reforms. My MP tried to enter into a reasoned debate, but without success. As we came up to a red light, my MP finally flipped. He said: “Right, I’ve had enough of this! Drop us here! Here’s your money.”  He chucked him a ten pound note – I think the meter at the time was only on £4.30 – and got out. So there we were: at the side of the road, in the rain, trying to flag down another taxi. Needless to say, my very grumpy MP was late for the event.

The waiting game
If possible, our work experience students normally spend a week in the constituency office followed by a week here in Parliament. I am based in Parliament and like to think I am accommodating and look after them well during their second week. However, I recently had a bit of a shocker. I woke up on Monday morning and, feeling a little tired after a pretty heavy weekend, thought I would have a lie in and go in later on. My MP normally travels down to London on Monday so he wouldn’t know either way. Perfect! The problem was that as I turned over to go back to sleep, my work experience student was arriving in Parliament. It wasn’t until I looked at my phone after waking up a couple of hours later that I saw that I had missed seven calls from him plus another handful of calls and emails from the constituency office. (My phone had been on silent.) I ended up picking him up from reception a good three hours after our previously agreed time.

Unlike father, unlike son
Every two months or so I swap with another member of staff – I go up to the constituency office, and she comes down to Parliament. Most of the time a kind party member puts me up. However, on one occasion I was forced to stay at my MP’s house. Obviously he was down in London so I was there with his wife and his children – quite an awkward situation. One evening, as I was on my way to bed, my MP’s eldest son crashed through the front door. He had been out with his friends and was very drunk. We spoke briefly. I wasn’t particularly bothered about his drunken behaviour despite the fact he was underage. I was, however, slightly worried about the way he smelled of weed. I’m sure his father down in London was blissfully unaware of what his son was getting up to.
 

From 9 February to 1 April

At the Victoria and Albert Museum from 8 February to 22 April

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

How was Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY) created?
The show was initially written by host Angus Deayton and the show’s producer, the late Harry Thompson. However, as the programme started to grow in popularity (at series four to be exact), more writers were brought in.

Mark Burton and John O’Farrell were the first to join the show. Mark is now best known for co-scripting Hollywood blockbuster Madagascar and the last Wallace and Gromit movie, but he still writes for HIGNFY from time to time. John is now a very successful novelist.

How did you start writing for HIGNFY?
You find your way onto a list, I think, via recommendations from producers or writers who’ve worked with you elsewhere. But it must be a very small list because there have been about two writers that have joined since I started, which was 10 years ago. I’m almost a junior partner there!

When do the jokes get written? Do the writers write together?
Most of the show is written on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday is mainly odd ones out, missing words, and the odd news story. Wednesday is rounds one and two with three writers each day. On Thursday one writer is on hand for rewrites or if a big story breaks. There’s a few writing days before the series starts for picture captions and VT gags.

We’re given the story (or odd one out) and handed pages of notes from the researchers. We then read through it all, shout out if we think of a gag off the back of the research, and if the other two laugh it’ll get typed onto the page in note form. Generally we like to send the producers at least four gags per odd one out picture, eight per news story and two or three per missing word. Once we feel like we’ve got enough gags we start wording them up. Some will fall by the wayside, others will be improved, and if we’re lucky some new really funny ones will emerge.

Why is HIGNFY so successful?
Paul [Merton], Ian [Hislop], the chemistry with the guests and the chairman, the ad libbed moments, the interesting revelations, the speed-editing. The chairman’s script is just one factor. Also HIGNFY has always had a brilliant production team, and even keeps on a permanent core of researchers, who are compiling stories, pictures and clips all year round, which doesn’t tend to happen on other similar shows.

Mock the Week is the show that if you like comedy you watch the show, which is great because there are a lot of people who like comedy. But people who like comedy and people who are interested in the news watch HIGNFY. And I think that’s what I love about it. It’s more than just a comedy show. It’s a sort of dialogue of the political state of nation.

What do you think of the guest presenters?
The guest presenters have been going for almost as long as Angus did it – eight or nine years now. With Angus, his delivery was one of the great things on the show. After Angus left for the first two or three years you never quite knew what you were getting. I mean Neil Kinnock was the famously disastrous episode. He didn’t want to deliver any of the lines and he wanted to rewrite them, which he did and they didn’t work. Technically I wrote for that episode but I don’t think a single word that any of us wrote went out because he was so determined to do it the Neil Kinnock way rather than the HIGNFY way.

But generally there are certain times when there have been guest presenters and you think, well actually that was fantastic that Robin Cook did it even though he’s never going to deliver a line as well as Alexander Armstrong. But he’s going to bring something else to the show and I think that’s what you hope for when you book someone like Neil Kinnock.

They went through a long phase of finding it hard to get politicians to do it because they always felt, ‘What’s the point of doing this show?’ But I think now with the coalition you’ve got a few more interesting personalities. Maverick-type personalities like Louise Mensch for instance.

Speaking of Louise Mensch, there have been accusations that HIGNFY can be misogynistic towards female guests.

Less so than on other panel shows, but I think it can sometimes turn into a bit of a boys’ club and there is a danger of that. I would say less that it’s misogyny but there is a thing with panel shows of having to jump in and say your bit, or having to interrupt – things that men do without thinking. Mock the Week feels like that quite often.

There’s so much jumping in on Mock the Week that you very rarely see a woman on the show now because even if you’re a great performer, and you’ve got great gags, you still have to practically bang your fist on the table to get heard on that show.

Again I wouldn’t accuse a show like that of misogyny. I don’t think there’s any intent.

Are you ever disappointed if a joke isn’t used?
There are so many elements that make the show a success you can’t sit there and say, ‘Oh my line wasn’t used’. I would say 70 per cent of what we write doesn’t make the edit.

Are Paul and Ian’s contributions scripted?
Not at all. All we write is the chairman’s script. They have a technical run through at about 5pm and the show goes out at 7pm, so at 5pm they’ll probably see the missing word headlines and they’ll see the blanks so they have a few minutes while they’re in make-up to think about jokes for that.

Do you think it works because it’s not scripted?
It works because there are extra layers to it. The late Harry Thompson who brought HIGNFY to TV made a conscious decision on his part to have Ian, the grammar school boy, on one side and Paul, the voice of the working class, on the other.

Harry was a big fan of Steptoe and Dad’s Army and those classic class sitcoms. And so you had Angus as the sort of middle voice, voice of middle England, Ian as the posh one and Paul as the sort of thick working class one who nevertheless runs rings around the Oxbridge-educated toffs.

That class element was so successful it’s now become a template for other panel shows. Harry also produced They Think it’s All Over – starring Lee Hurst and David Gower – that’s the same thing. And now if you look at a lot of panel shows, QI – Stephen Fry and Alan Davis, Would I Lie to You – David Mitchell and Lee Mack – it’s a sort of the British obsession with class that’s no longer in sitcoms but is continued in panel shows.

What’s your favourite joke of all time on the show?
It really is a case that you’re churning out so many in the day. You can’t always remember who came up with what. And the producers just get sent the jokes so they have no idea who is responsible for each one.

Having said that, my favourite joke I can remember was something Ged Parsons came up with about Zinedine Zidane as a kid, suffering the daily humiliation of hanging around for school dinners as the names were read out alphabetically.

Are there any sacred cows in politics – politicians you wouldn’t target?
Any sacred cows? I think not. I come at it from a slightly different angle to a lot of people. I always feel that anyone who wields power in any way is a legitimate target.

Do you ever feel bad about the jokes you write?
Sometimes I feel slightly bad about it. I sometimes feel annoyed that I’ve slagged some people off and I’m aware they’re not as bad as I made out. I would very rarely tell a joke I don’t believe in, but it’s so easy to go for the gratuitous joke.

There was a long period of doing Prescott fat jokes. And there’s a part of me that was saying that as long as he belongs to a government that’s telling us how we should live our lives there is an element of hypocrisy at work there and I didn’t feel too bad about it.

But I still think there’s a grey area between legitimate attack and gratuity. And sometimes the gratuitous joke does the job so much better.

King’s Head
This was the meeting place for the Restoration-era Whig Green Ribbon Club, named after the green ribbons members wore to identify each other during street brawls. Here, they could complain about court and warn each other about murderous Catholic conspiracies.

The Gay Hussar
Named after high-spirited Hungarian cavalrymen, this Soho restaurant fortified post-war Labour politicians with fresh fish dishes and ample Hungarian wine. It was the failure of a younger generation to sup there in the 1980s, the proprietor insisted, that caused the party’s fortunes to decline.

Institute of Contemporary Arts Bar
With its multicoloured tiles and watermelon cocktails, this bar on the Mall lets civil servants feel avant-garde. Unsurprisingly, it’s a favourite of the ‘nudge unit’, the psychology-inspired Behavioural Insight Team set up by the coalition in 2010.

Red Lion Pub
No, not that pub on Whitehall. The other Red Lion in Soho, where 19th century radicals used to drink. Marx – a prodigious drinker – lectured his radical followers in a room above the bar and, along with Engels, drew up the Communist Manifesto here in 1848.

Trafalgar Tavern
Some adventurous ministers made a summer trip to Greenwich, where they dined on a tasty dish of whitebait, fresh from the Thames. It became an annual event for much of the 19th century, until Gladstone decided it was too frivolous and ended it.

White’s
By the 19th century much political boozing took place behind the closed doors of London’s elite gentlemen’s clubs, such as White’s, which were often former coffee houses. Whigs and radicals drank at the Reform Club, while those keen to avoid political controversy dined at Grillion’s.

Cogers’ Hall at the Barley Mow
The Cogers, a free speech society, met in several different pubs until it found the Barley Mow, Salisbury Square, in 1871, which became its home for almost a century. Distinguished speakers at Cogers’ debates included Disraeli and Gladstone.

Firecracker
When there’s a need to let off steam, it’s always better to do it in song. This swish oriental restaurant near Millbank hosts Tory karaoke parties.

The Marquis of Granby
One of the closest pubs to Conservative HQ. Party officials come here to drink while special interest groups discuss policy over a fish supper. But there’s no danger of slacking off – the publican rings the parliamentary bell to remind them when it’s time to get back to work.

Miles’s Coffee House
Coffee houses appeared in London in the mid-17th century and quickly became the fashionable place to do business and talk politics. The first debating society, the Rota Club, met at Miles’s. Later, Whigs got their caffeine fix at St James’s, Tories at the Cocoa Tree.

Gardening, or more accurately pottering in the garden with a view to a G&T after working up the teeniest bit of a sweat, is not what you could technically call a hobby. It’s more a therapy. Funny how pruning savagely at a miscreant climber can be effected more robustly when thinking of certain political opponents. Though, I have to say, my neighbour, who favours a clean-as-a-whistle lawn and no one plant so much as touching another, refers to my patch as “your wilderness”. In-keeping with this piece, I prefer “my hinterland”.

Actually, manicured lawns are not my bag. Indeed, being a plant-aholic, I have no lawn. Over the years I’ve chipped away at it, just to squeeze in one more must-have shrub. Trouble is, that wee, irresistible plant in the garden centre grows soon into an unwieldy monster under which the urban fox has made its den. My neighbour and I feared that drains had ruptured some years ago because of an ungodly pong in the back garden, but it turned out an old dog fox I knew well had lain down and died in among my shrubs. It was some days before we located him and nice men from the city council, wearing immaculate pinstripes and serious elbow-length gauntlets, removed my old foxy friend and the pong. His place has been taken by a cheeky newcomer, who’s made his/her way through my broken cat flap. I should explain: I have two cats, Newt and Bossie, and the cat flap eventually fell apart after battles – perhaps cat and fox battles – over the years.

I have seen him/her walking, quite the thing, up my meandering path, brushing past the heaving herbaceous borders and loitering with intent to thieve from the cat bowls. Old boots have been moved into the conservatory at night, and the mop one morning appeared to have made its partial way through the aforesaid cat-flap area. Apparently, this does not put my cats in a flap. Seems an accommodating arrangement has been made for these nocturnal visits. I almost haven’t the heart to have the cat flap mended. Almost.

But back to pottering: I’ve left the holly tree that encroaches into my garden, because it is a haven for the sparrows which, apparently, are in decline elsewhere. Here, they sit, beak by beak, in the holly tree. Each morning and night there is an unholy row as they jostle for perches. I call the holly the singing tree because, despite the rammy, you can never see the wee buggers. And, of course, I feed them cordon bleu fat balls, sunflower seeds, peanuts and brown bread dipped in beef dripping. They hardly have to commute.

So there you have it, me at the foot of the garden under the weeping birch, cats at my feet, G&T in hand, the roar of the city traffic defeated by the cacophony of urban bird life and, if I’m very still, a mildly curious glance from an all-too-cocky fox. Perhaps not a hobby, but who cares?

Christine Grahame is the SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator
Bill Cash
IB Tauris, £25

Bill Cash is well known in the House of Commons for his relentless opposition to British membership of the EU. Not for him the cool, analytical approach of the new generation of eurosceptics who are bringing the word back to its true meaning as they search for opportunities to redefine British membership in Gaullist terms. Cash sees nothing to praise and everything to denounce.

Something of the same passion pervades his very readable biography John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator (IB Tauris, £25) – Bright was a cousin of his great-grandfather. It is right and attractive to show a proper respect and indeed affection for one’s forebears, but admiration carried beyond a certain point can topple over into hero worship. Surely, one thinks, Bright must have made some mistakes, must have revealed some flaws of character in his long political life. The relentless flow of praise is in danger of becoming monotonous. I was reminded of the work of GM Trevelyan in his youth – not his life of Bright, which I have not read – but his total and unsparing admiration of Garibaldi. As the gallant triumphs multiply, one begins to long for the occasional wart to make the portrait more human and real.

Yet when we get down to actual cases, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion that Bright was almost always on the right side. He was right to support Peel over the Corn Laws, though perhaps Cash exaggerates slightly the role of the Anti-Corn Law League in that success. He was right to oppose the Crimean War and use in that context his most vivid phrase: “The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.” He was right to criticise Palmerston’s foreign policy, which was “jingoistic” before the phrase was even coined. He was right to back the North in the American Civil War. He was right to campaign passionately at mass meetings up and down the country for the extension of the franchise, though it was Disraeli who actually achieved the parliamentary triumph and dished the Whigs in 1867. He was arguably right to resign from Gladstone’s cabinet over the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882.

In all these matters, Bright followed a consistent liberal line. He was an outstanding speaker in the Commons and developed a style of his own: “No effort, no haste, no anger. The broad comely Saxon features were lit up by a genial and good humoured smile.” But otherwise, while the House roared, in every other sentence was the signal for a burst of laughter, prolonged beyond usual limits of duration. The orator stood bland, calm and unmoved. In 1866, for example, he gave speech after speech at hugely attended mass meetings in the open air. Around 150,000 people gathered to hear him at Woodhouse Moor in Leeds, and he was speaking again in the Victoria Hall that evening. A week later he was speaking in Glasgow. Earlier, he had attracted great numbers to a speech in his own constituency of Birmingham and a little later at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Bright consistently argued against any violence at these meetings and they all passed without serious trouble.

Towards the end of his life there was a change that no one could have foreseen, for though in earlier years he had roundly denounced the British aristocracy, he was a strong monarchist and had no time for Charles Stewart Parnell and his supporters in Ireland. As Cash writes: “Instead of showing loyalty to Great Britain they had thrown it back in his face and voted for Parnell and national independence.” Bright kept in close touch with Joseph Chamberlain, his colleague in the representation of Birmingham, and in June after much coming and going he voted with 92 other Liberal members against Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill, which was defeated by 341 votes to 311. Walter Bagehot had earlier detected what he described as “the Conservative vein in Mr Bright”, and in the end this loyalty to the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament prevailed and he was counted as a Liberal Unionist. As Cash brings out, the final irony was that Bright found himself on the same side as Lord Salisbury who had been the most vigorous of his opponents in the great cause of his life, namely the enfranchisement of the British working class.

Douglas Hurd was foreign secretary from 1989-1995 and home secretary from 1985-1989

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

The Conservatives: A History  
Robin Harris
Bantam Press, £30

As Robin Harris points out in his introduction to The Conservatives: A History, the last one-volume history of the Conservative Party was written by the late Professor John Ramsden. His An Appetite for Power (1999) was published just as the author had given up his membership of the party. Harris stresses that his interpretation of the history of the Conservative Party is different from that of Ramsden, who covered organisation, campaigning and wider political issues.

At 632 pages, this is a substantial book, and the author brings to his research and writing both the work he put into his superb biography of Talleyrand and experience gained as director of the Conservative Research Department, and then as a member of Thatcher’s No 10 Policy Unit.

Harris takes a ‘high politics’ interpretation of his history, which concentrates on the lives and leadership of its leaders and prime ministers. It is really a book in two parts, with the first 13 chapters of 375 pages being a traditional and stimulating account. The final five chapters, from Eden to Cameron – 150 pages – are more of a polemic, moving very quickly through the lives of Thatcher and Major. In his introduction, the author points out that he has written a biography of Thatcher that will not be published until her death, so he is reluctant to reveal too much.

But she, alongside Disraeli and Salisbury, is a hero of his, while the tradition of Baldwin, Macmillan, Major and now Cameron receives short shrift. Harris argues that the Conservative Party has survived for more than 150 years – and for most of that period in government – because it had managed change, appealed to public sentiment, ditched unpopular policies and leaders, split its opponents, and had a touch of magic. But Conservative leaders have often attempted change against the conservative, if not reactionary, instincts of the party’s parliamentarians and activists.Balfour dithered, and, as Harris notes, he saw the Carlton Club as “infested by the political bore”, and “when Balfour or any other Conservative lost the bores, he lost the party”.

On Cameron, Robin Harris concludes: “Mr Cameron and his closest colleagues will probably have to face the choice they most dread: whether to side with the Conservative Party on the backbenches and in the country, or whether to cling to their coalition partners.”

Keith Simpson is the Conservative MP for Broadland and PPS to William Hague

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a biographical series chronicling the life of the 36th president of the United States. Three volumes have been published so far.

I picked up the Pulitzer Prize-winning third volume, Master of the Senate, following a hiking trip to upstate New York. It chronicles Johnson’s rapid ascent and rule as majority leader in the Senate, his victorious battle to pass a momentous civil rights bill and his election as vice-president to John F Kennedy in 1960.

LBJ was a powerful, paradoxical figure. He bent the Senate by intelligent manipulation, force of personality and ambition, but in The Path to Power, Caro also exposes his ruthless underbelly., from his vindictiveness towards opponents, the occasional dismissive treatment of his loving wife, and includes a set of photos, entitled ‘The Johnson Treatment’, that shows how the big man used his physical presence to intimidate.

Yet there are some things to admire. The climax of the book comes in a passage about the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and the reader is pulled in by the chicanery and subplots. LBJ was eventually successful, and southern intransigence on race and civil rights was at last breached. Big-ticket stuff.
When Caro’s last volume is published, I recommend you snap it up.

Nick Smith is Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

What’s your favourite book?
That would have to be The Wind in the Willows because it’s a wonderfully funny, sympathetic study of characters. Anyone who cannot find a little room in their hearts for Mr Toad, Mole and Ratty hasn’t got one.

What’s your favourite political book or biography?
I don’t really like political books, particularly biographies, for the simple reason that biography tends to end up as character assassination and autobiography as self-justification, a variation on the theme of ‘If only they’d listen to me, it would all have been alright.’

What was your favourite book as a child?
The Jungle Book. My mother used to read it to me and my siblings, and it seemed to come alive. Probably something to do with my mother being one of the last Raj babies.  

What’s your least favourite book?
The least favourite that I’ve actually bothered finishing is probably The Count of Monte Cristo. The central plot has great drive and pace, and some drama, but all the ridiculous subplots get in the way. Apparently, this is what happens when you publish by instalments in a paper in nineteenth-century France.

Which literary character would you most like to be?
That would have to be Jeeves. Anyone who hasn’t at times wanted to be as smart and as cool as PG Wodehouse’s most famous manservant either has an inflated idea of their own abilities or a total lack of imagination.

What was the most inspiring book you’ve ever read?
The Oxford History of Britain. If a nation can survive that many mistakes, plots, bizarre mishaps and well-intentioned politicians, and still achieve great highs to go with the lows, I think we have hope for the future.

Lord Addington is a Liberal Democrat peer

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

How was Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY) created?
The show was initially written by host Angus Deayton and the show’s producer, the late Harry Thompson. However, as the programme started to grow in popularity (at series four to be exact), more writers were brought in.

Mark Burton and John O’Farrell were the first to join the show. Mark is now best known for co-scripting Hollywood blockbuster Madagascar and the last Wallace and Gromit movie, but he still writes for HIGNFY from time to time. John is now a very successful novelist.

How did you start writing for HIGNFY?
You find your way onto a list, I think, via recommendations from producers or writers who’ve worked with you elsewhere. But it must be a very small list because there have been about two writers that have joined since I started, which was 10 years ago. I’m almost a junior partner there!

When do the jokes get written? Do the writers write together?
Most of the show is written on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday is mainly odd ones out, missing words, and the odd news story. Wednesday is rounds one and two with three writers each day. On Thursday one writer is on hand for rewrites or if a big story breaks. There’s a few writing days before the series starts for picture captions and VT gags.

We’re given the story (or odd one out) and handed pages of notes from the researchers. We then read through it all, shout out if we think of a gag off the back of the research, and if the other two laugh it’ll get typed onto the page in note form. Generally we like to send the producers at least four gags per odd one out picture, eight per news story and two or three per missing word. Once we feel like we’ve got enough gags we start wording them up. Some will fall by the wayside, others will be improved, and if we’re lucky some new really funny ones will emerge.

Why is HIGNFY so successful?
Paul [Merton], Ian [Hislop], the chemistry with the guests and the chairman, the ad libbed moments, the interesting revelations, the speed-editing. The chairman’s script is just one factor. Also HIGNFY has always had a brilliant production team, and even keeps on a permanent core of researchers, who are compiling stories, pictures and clips all year round, which doesn’t tend to happen on other similar shows.

Mock the Week is the show that if you like comedy you watch the show, which is great because there are a lot of people who like comedy. But people who like comedy and people who are interested in the news watch HIGNFY. And I think that’s what I love about it. It’s more than just a comedy show. It’s a sort of dialogue of the political state of nation.

What do you think of the guest presenters?
The guest presenters have been going for almost as long as Angus did it – eight or nine years now. With Angus, his delivery was one of the great things on the show. After Angus left for the first two or three years you never quite knew what you were getting. I mean Neil Kinnock was the famously disastrous episode. He didn’t want to deliver any of the lines and he wanted to rewrite them, which he did and they didn’t work. Technically I wrote for that episode but I don’t think a single word that any of us wrote went out because he was so determined to do it the Neil Kinnock way rather than the HIGNFY way.

But generally there are certain times when there have been guest presenters and you think, well actually that was fantastic that Robin Cook did it even though he’s never going to deliver a line as well as Alexander Armstrong. But he’s going to bring something else to the show and I think that’s what you hope for when you book someone like Neil Kinnock.

They went through a long phase of finding it hard to get politicians to do it because they always felt, ‘What’s the point of doing this show?’ But I think now with the coalition you’ve got a few more interesting personalities. Maverick-type personalities like Louise Mensch for instance.

Speaking of Louise Mensch, there have been accusations that HIGNFY can be misogynistic towards female guests.
Less so than on other panel shows, but I think it can sometimes turn into a bit of a boys’ club and there is a danger of that. I would say less that it’s misogyny but there is a thing with panel shows of having to jump in and say your bit, or having to interrupt – things that men do without thinking. Mock the Week feels like that quite often.

There’s so much jumping in on Mock the Week that you very rarely see a woman on the show now because even if you’re a great performer, and you’ve got great gags, you still have to practically bang your fist on the table to get heard on that show. Again I wouldn’t accuse a show like that of misogyny. I don’t think there’s any intent.

Are you ever disappointed if a joke isn’t used?
There are so many elements that make the show a success you can’t sit there and say, ‘Oh my line wasn’t used’. I would say 70 per cent of what we write doesn’t make the edit.

Are Paul and Ian’s contributions scripted?
Not at all. All we write is the chairman’s script. They have a technical run through at about 5pm and the show goes out at 7pm, so at 5pm they’ll probably see the missing word headlines and they’ll see the blanks so they have a few minutes while they’re in make-up to think about jokes for that.

Do you think it works because it’s not scripted?
It works because there are extra layers to it. The late Harry Thompson who brought HIGNFY to TV made a conscious decision on his part to have Ian, the grammar school boy, on one side and Paul, the voice of the working class, on the other.

Harry was a big fan of Steptoe and Dad’s Army and those classic class sitcoms. And so you had Angus as the sort of middle voice, voice of middle England, Ian as the posh one and Paul as the sort of thick working class one who nevertheless runs rings around the Oxbridge-educated toffs.
That class element was so successful it’s now become a template for other panel shows. Harry also produced They Think it’s All Over – starring Lee Hurst and David Gower – that’s the same thing. And now if you look at a lot of panel shows, QI – Stephen Fry and Alan Davis, Would I Lie to You – David Mitchell and Lee Mack – it’s a sort of the British obsession with class that’s no longer in sitcoms but is continued in panel shows.

What’s your favourite joke of all time on the show?
It really is a case that you’re churning out so many in the day. You can’t always remember who came up with what. And the producers just get sent the jokes so they have no idea who is responsible for each one.

Having said that, my favourite joke I can remember was something Ged Parsons came up with about Zinedine Zidane as a kid, suffering the daily humiliation of hanging around for school dinners as the names were read out alphabetically.

Are there any sacred cows in politics – politicians you wouldn’t target?
Any sacred cows? I think not. I come at it from a slightly different angle to a lot of people. I always feel that anyone who wields power in any way is a legitimate target.

Do you ever feel bad about the jokes you write?
Sometimes I feel slightly bad about it. I sometimes feel annoyed that I’ve slagged some people off and I’m aware they’re not as bad as I made out. I would very rarely tell a joke I don’t believe in, but it’s so easy to go for the gratuitous joke.

There was a long period of doing Prescott fat jokes. And there’s a part of me that was saying that as long as he belongs to a government that’s telling us how we should live our lives there is an element of hypocrisy at work there and I didn’t feel too bad about it.

But I still think there’s a grey area between legitimate attack and gratuity. And sometimes the gratuitous joke does the job so much better.

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Margin Call has the ingredients to make a decent film about modern Wall Street. There’s the flashy lifestyle – the sharp suits, the strip joints, the cars. There are the eminent actors – some with Oscar credentials. And there’s the moral argument – the financial engineering and irresponsibility that could destroy a company or the markets, or both. ‘Be first. Be smarter. Or cheat,’ is the film’s tagline. Dog eat dog is the message.

The film is set over a 24-hour period in an investment bank during the early stages of the financial crisis. Loosely based around the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it illustrates the conflict between ethics and business in the financial sector. It’s also the first full-length offering from director and writer JC Chandor, whose father worked for over 30 years with Merrill Lynch.

However, Margin Call falls short of financial thriller legend. The reasons for the most recent financial crash are multiple and complex – as column inches, theses and books are testament to. This 24-hour snapshot attempts to pin some of those crucial decisions to a specific moment in time, but the broader consequences remain unexplored. Maybe that’s the point. But it leaves this tight, and at times tense, film disconnected and isolated from what followed in 2008.

Some of the action is compelling. When the firm’s head risk analyst Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is fired, one of his juniors Peter Sullivan (carefully underplayed by Zachary Quinto) takes up a project Dale had been working on. He discovers a flaw in the company’s contingency plan that is so large it could lead to the collapse of the business. Cue hurried meetings with the firm’s big cheeses at 2am and a choice between jacking it all in or trying to sell every asset on the books before anyone notices, causing a wider problem for financial markets.

These ethical dilemmas are the film’s main undercurrent. Sullivan used to be a rocket scientist, while Dale used to build bridges. Kevin Spacey’s character Sam Rogers dug holes. They gave up their jobs doing ‘real’ engineering for financial engineering and each of them is confronted with that choice. For Sam Rogers, this predicament ends with him digging a grave in his ex-wife’s garden to bury his dead dog.

Other metaphors are less effective, and lead to real clangers in the script. Two relatively junior staff members escape for a late-night cigarette on the roof of their skyscraper with their boss after they discover the firm’s tenuous position. The more senior executive looks down upon New York and remarks: “It’s a long way down.” “Yes, it is,” his junior replies.

There is also a laboured attempt to explain some of the financial jargon for cinema audiences. The firm’s big boss John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) unbelievably asks for figures to be explained to him “as you might a young child or a golden retriever. It wasn’t brains that got me here, I’ll tell you that.” Worrying, if he is at the helm of a top US investment bank.

There is no doubt that the cast is top notch. Irons is the runaway star as Tuld. He is subtle and succeeds in making some of the stickier dialogue work in his favour.

Fellow big-hitter Kevin Spacey – who plays Sam Rogers – is best in the scenes with Irons. Demi Moore takes the only female lead as Sarah Robertson, the fall guy (or girl) for the firm’s troubles. The notion of the woman taking the blame is perhaps a stereotype, or perhaps a sad truth, but we never discover how this pans out.

Indeed, Margin Call avoids one big question: did they get away with it? There are few clues in this neat package of a film. We know what follows is momentous. Yet this snapshot into one day and night in an investment bank is too clean and devoid of sympathetic characters to upset anyone too much.

Much like public sentiment towards bankers at the moment, the characters featured in Margin Call appear to get away with it, and that feels wholly unsatisfactory.

Margin Call is showing in cinemas now