Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
John Crace

Call Me Dave by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott – digested read

Call Me Dave digested read illustration Matt Blease
Illustration: Matt Blease

Let me start by making it clear this book is no petty act of revenge. I have invested a great deal of time and money in this project and I am deadly serious in my attempt to undermine the “so-called” prime minister. It’s impossible to trust a man to whose party I had given bundles of cash only to find myself not made foreign secretary. David Cameron must be the only person in the entire Conservative party who is unaware that cash for access is one of its guiding principles. PS: I also told him about my iffy non-dom status long before he says I did.

I am also deeply indebted to Isabel Oakeshott, the former political editor of the Sunday Times, for all her investigative help for which she was paid c.£500,000. Isabel is one of those rare journalists who has managed to get one of her closest contacts banged up in prison, and I am extremely hopeful she will have added to her tally by the end of the year.

To the outside world, Chipping Norton is known as Chipping Norton. But to people like the Camerons, it is known as Chipping Snorton. You can draw your own conclusions. Many people who have not been to parties attended by the Camerons have testified to the fact that wild orgies and class A drugs are commonplace. Samantha has been described as particularly euphoric at times and Dave once lost his phone. Vladimir Putin was outraged at this potential breach of world security when we told him about it.

Dave was born into a well-off family – you heard it here first – and went to Eton. There he had no friends whatsoever and was considered a bit thick before going to Oxford. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of dope we smoked as we listened to Supertramp. By the way, I hope I’m getting paid for this interview,” said James Delingpole, a former friend of the prime minister’s.

Dave was also a member of the Bullingdon Club, a secret Oxford sect dedicated to murdering plebs for pleasure, and the horrifying Piers Gaveston dinner society. At one such event, he was even possibly seen by someone who might have been there to have inserted his penis into a pig’s mouth. We have tracked down the pig in question. It has been receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder for more than 30 years. “I felt I was choking and couldn’t breathe,” the pig would have said if it hadn’t already been dead. Dave has since been noted for the ease with which he handles pigs at public gatherings. “I wouldn’t trust him with a bargepole,” said one pig who preferred to be called just Percy.

Having surprised everyone by not only having a couple of girlfriends about whom we could dig up no real dirt, and getting a first-class honours degree, Dave was fast-tracked into Conservative Central Office, where many people immediately identified him as just as much of an ambitious little shit as everyone else. He also got on particularly well with homosexuals, a position on which we hold no particular view but which may still be of interest to the many members of the Conservative who are still homophobic.

We now find ourselves rehashing countless cuttings that have been repeatedly rehashed elsewhere about how Dave worked as a spad, used family connections to work for Carlton TV, and somehow made it into parliament as MP for Witney despite everyone thinking he was a complete political and intellectual lightweight.

During this time, he fell in love with a down-to-her-last-£10m hippy chick, Samantha Sheffield, and they got married. She didn’t find him that attractive but liked his sense of humour. Especially when he kept saying how much he wanted to help working-class people. Their first son, Ivan, was severely disabled. Unfortunately, Dave proved to be an exemplary parent so we will move on from that quickly.

Dave knew a lot of people in Westminster and was very creepy to those in power, which was how he became elected leader of the Conservative party in 2005. There wasn’t a person in the party who wasn’t astonished they had elected a grade-A moron, but Dave – as so often in life – was lucky to be surrounded by more competent people to bail him out of trouble when he was too busy watching box sets of Midsomer Murders.

By some fluke, he became prime minister in 2010. The story of the coalition has been well-documented elsewhere, but that won’t stop us pointing out how poor his management of the country was. Putin, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel have all told us he is quite the stupidest man they have ever met, and they have never known another politician to have survived so many major catastrophes.

Dave also somehow won the 2015 election and tried to give political strategist Lynton Crosby a French kiss when the results came in. “Let’s go the whole hog,” said Dave. “What is it about you and pigs, you Pommy weirdo?” Lynton replied. If there was one person more surprised than Dave himself to have won the election it was me, as my election polls had all concluded he wouldn’t. But then accuracy has never been my strong point.

Digested read, digested: Don’t call me, Mike.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.