OH-OH DIANE

WELL that escalated quickly. One minute Theresa May was lightheartedly dismissing EU criticism of her approach to Brexit as “Brussels gossip”, and the next a task force was setting sail for Zeebrugge.

If only the UK had that nice Diane Abbott conducting negotiations. Judging by her performance during an interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, there would be a smile on many a face if Diane was allowed to do the business in Brussels.

Juncker: Diane, mon cher. What did you have in mind in terms of a divorce settlement?

Diane: We’ll give you 50 pence per EU citizen, Jean-Claude. No, sorry, £50,000. Hang on, £50 million per citizen. Actually … will you take puppies instead of pounds?

One newspaper asked if the pile up over police numbers amounted to “the worst interview ever”. That is a tough one. John Nott tearing off his microphone and walking out on Robin Day in 1982 was an oldie but goldie; many will have soft spots for Michael Howard v Paxo or Eddie Mair v BoJo, and who could forget Neil Kinnock accusing Jim Naughtie of trying to “kebab” him? Natalie Bennett’s coughing fit in the face of questioning still induces a fit of the giggles, while Labour’s Dawn Butler wrongly accusing lovely Costa Coffee of not paying its fair share of tax was another buttocks-clencher.

Sometimes, the car crash interview is a Jurassic park affair, so named after the scene in the Spielberg classic where a little white goat is tethered outside the T-Rex enclosure to await its fate. Hard as it is to believe (not), ruthless party elders will wheel out a young, vulnerable politician to take the flak, as happened with Treasury Minister Chloe Smith when she went on Newsnight in place of her boss, George Osborne, to explain his deferral of a fuel duty rise.  Some party apparatchiks regard the tough interview as a Darwinian rite of passage. If Joe or Josephine Bloggs cannot handle a mauling from Mair or a pasting from Paxo, they will never cut it in Cabinet is the theory, and there is a lot in that. Otherwise, the ball of fire can go up when two (male) egos the same planetary size collide, or a rogue civilian enters the mix and causes no end of havoc (Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy).

Ms Abbott, having been an MP for 30 years, can hardly play the novice card. Down the years she has been attacked by the press more times than pinata at a children’s party. For her to think that she could go into an interview about recruiting 10,000 more officers and not be asked how much it would cost is ludicrous. Why did she enter the lions’ den so unprepared? She might as well have done a Lady Gaga and wore a raw meat suit. According to Ms Abbott, it was the seventh interview of the morning and in the previous six she had been fine, which is a bit like saying you were ace as a sea captain until the day you pulled a shift on the Titanic.

Not that her party leader was upset. Dear me no. “I’m not embarrassed in the slightest,” trilled Jeremy Corbyn, who also revealed this week that his nickname is “Monsieur Zen”. One might attribute his relaxed approach to the fact that Jeremy and Diane go back a long way together. When you have ridden on a motorcycle across East Germany with someone, looking less like Brando and Mary Murphy in The Wild One and more like Wallace and Gromit, it is pretty difficult to be embarrassed by anything they do. What does making your party look even more of a shambles matter when you’ve seen someone drying their smalls at the side of an autobahn?

One notable thing about the great car crash interviews to date is that none of them have taken place in Scottish broadcasting. The scalp takers have on occasion been Scottish (Mair, Wark with Maggie) but the deed has not been done on a Scottish news programme. Are our broadcasters too deferential, too keen to be seen as even-handed, not as thirsty for blood? We’ll soon know if Ms Abbott loses her Westminster seat in June and tries to return to politics as an MSP. Scotland is but a short motorcyle ride away, Diane.

IT'S A HARD KNOCK LIFE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

BUSY old week, what with the local elections, the General Election, and the world generally continuing its progress towards Hades in a flaming handcart. Simply no time to have a massage and meditate, far less strip naked, paint oneself in Peruvian mud and run through a wood praising Nanahuatzin the sun god (the usual way Herald staff put the pips back in their apples, since you ask).

One person who could feel my pain is Ivanka Trump, whose dedication to highlighting the plight of working women is rapidly making her the modern day St Joan of Fifth Avenue. In her new book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, the First Daughter reveals that days were so hectic on daddy’s campaign trail she went into “survival mode” and had to get by without her regular massage and meditation sessions. And some churlish folk say Ivanka hasn’t sweated to get where she is today.

Still in DC book news, David Garrow’s new biography, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama is causing a stir by telling of the former president’s double marriage proposal to Sheila Miyoshi Jager before he met Michelle. Jager’s parents thought at 23 and 25 the couple were too young.  Exposed as a young romantic: can the man get any cooler?

THE PERILS OF PET SITTING

SHOULD Emmanuel Macron win the French presidency tomorrow baby animals in France will heave huge, cute sighs of relief. There will be further need, you see, for his opponent, Marine Le Pen, to do any more of her now trademark photocalls with them.

The National Front leader started off being photographed with kittens before progressing to calves, a pair of sloths, and various foals, all to prove to voters she is a cuddly old dear really. Following the accusations about financial affairs she levied at Macron during a very heated TV debate, she can now look forward to spending the post-election period with those ultimate bundles of furry fun, lawyers.  

Speaking of furry cuddles (gosh that transition was seamless, wasn’t it?) the Alison Rowat Academy For Well-Behaved Pooches is expanding. After a successful trial of dog-walking we are moving into boarding next week with the arrival of a three-year-old Cocker Spaniel who is staying while his human is in Tenerife. He came for a trial run last Sunday afternoon, and I do mean “run”. Over the course of three hours, he did not stop tearing around for a second. At the risk of looking like I’m recreating a certain advert, I think I’ll have to buy a pair of rollerskates. Wheels. A rocket-fuelled spaniel. Municipal pavements. What could possibly go wrong?

See you next week.