On the day of Geoffrey Howe’s memorial, Monkey hears that Dead Sheep, the play written by ITV’s Tonight reporter Jonathan Maitland about the former chancellor’s savaging of Margaret Thatcher in his resignation speech, may be made into a BBC film. A reading of the play – described by the Guardian’s Michael Billington as “extremely entertaining” – went down well at the corporation and producers are now in talks to raise funding. At Howe’s service in Westminster, attended by his widow Elspeth, David Cameron, George Osborne and John Major among others, Michael Heseltine reminded people of how dismissive the anti-European Thatcher could sometimes be towards Howe – something highlighted in Maitland’s play. Given Howe resigned over Thatcher’s policy towards Europe, saying, “the European enterprise is not and should not be seen … as some kind of zero-sum game ...” Monkey reckons he would have been amused to hear that the touring version of Dead Sheep is playing in Birmingham the week the Tory party conference takes place there. Ewe couldn’t make it up.
