What is David Cameron’s spirit animal? On Tuesday, thanks to Heat magazine, Britain will have the answer. The prime minister has filmed an interview with editor-in-chief Lucie Cave, with the trailer for the event already viewable on the publication’s website.
Arguably less anticipated than the Star Wars teaser, it is nonetheless a masterclass in post-imperial bathos. Do have a cushion handy if you’re planning to watch it, as it requires Cameron to Do Some Acting, in a performance critics are already calling his finest since he tanked in that One Direction video.
Incidentally, Cameron’s most recent mention in Heat magazine was last week, during which he was one of three options placed before Geordie Shore starlet Charlotte Crosby, in a game entitled “shag, punch or suck off”. Cameron completists may care to know that the prime minister was selected as the “suck off” option. (Clegg: shag. Miliband: punch. Just as an FYI.) Apparently keen to build on this constituency, Cameron agreed to the interview, giving Heat a level of access to Downing Street which even they appear to deem perplexingly unworthy of him. As they put it: “No, we can’t believe he let us film in Number 10 either.”
And so to the trailer. It opens with Ms Cave striding purposefully up Downing Street, bearing a large brown envelope. Perhaps that’s just a device, perhaps it’s a clever play on the assumption that any prime ministerial dealings with popular mags would have to be transactional. (Hilariously, GQ editor Dylan Jones once paid David Cameron 20 grand to be allowed to write a book about him.)
Anyway, the door opens, and Lucie is relieved of her envelope by some No 10 lackey, who carries it up the actual Downing Street stairs, along an actual Downing Street corridor, and into what appears to be the same sitting room in which world leaders are received, where it is presented to actual David Cameron. He opens it to reveal a dossier headlined: “Heat Prime Minister’s Question Time. TOP SECRET”. Cue a hefty sigh from Cameron, the feigning of a sweating brow, and a hammily worried shake of the head. Yep, it’s all right out of the Alec Douglas-Home playbook.
“It’s exhausting!” he exclaims in another clip. “Prime minister’s questions is a breeze compared to this.”
Admittedly, some people will probably decide Cameron was out-acted by the fireplace. And whichever way you slice it, it’s hard lines for Beeb inquisitor Andrew Neil, fast emerging as the thirteenth fairy of this general election campaign. He’s basically been knocked back for an interview in favour of someone whose most notable recent credit was writing Being Reem, the autobiography of lavishly dim Only Way is Essex star Joey Essex. Still, the episode now makes Tony Blair’s decision to be interviewed by Little Ant and Little Dec look like going 10 rounds with an illegally bred Paxman-Walden cross.
For those unable to put cross to paper without knowing what sauce the Tory leader would put on his chips, or who he’d most like to have a selfie with, the wait is almost over. Those questions will be answered, along with others tabled by inquisitors including the aforementioned Essex, Alan Carr, and Steph and Dom, the posh couple off of Gogglebox.
Ah, Steph and Dom. I’m afraid my manual explaining precisely how these two became a vital part of the fabric of British life contains the most tantalising lacuna. But they were of course last seen getting pissed with Nigel Farage, in a programme Channel 4 somehow failed to entitle Demagogglebox. By late April, at current rate of increase, Steph and Dom are expected to have amassed a power base analogous to that of the Earl of Warwick in the War of the Roses. Indeed, Britain’s increasingly worrying lack of a written constitution suggests that in the event of electoral deadlock they would have as good a claim as anyone on deciding how to proceed.
Anyone with credible intelligence on their spirit animals is invited to make the information known at their earliest convenience.
