The past came back to haunt another political figure yesterday when e-envoy Alex Allan owned up to his own embarrassing secret - not only is he Britain's new official nethead, he is also one of the UK's foremost Deadheads.
Mr Allan, 48, has his own website in homage to US rock band the Grateful Dead, which he runs in his spare time. The site at www.whitegum.com features a compendium of lyrics and allows users to locate the recurrence of particular words or phrases.
He said the website has several thousand hits a day and even generates fan mail.
"I first saw the Dead in the mud at Bickershawe in 1972, and was so knocked out I went to all the Lyceum concerts after that," he says on the site. "I have been a Deadhead ever since, and saw them whenever they came to Europe, but sadly never managed a US tour."
On the website he describes his former job as principal private secretary to John Major and later Tony Blair as "the same job as Bernard in Yes, Prime Minister".
Mr Allan, who is the British High Commissioner for Australia, also uses the site to keep a public journal of his travels and post pictures of his dog. His travails include giving lectures on Thatcherism. The quietly spoken man is described by e-minister, Patricia Hewitt as a "very unusual civil servant".
A Cambridge mathematics graduate, Mr Allan is married to an Australian artist and worked as a computer consultant in Australia in the mid-1980s.
He oversaw the launch of the first Number 10 website and yesterday admitted to some frustration with the government's laggardly approach to the internet.
"I can email my mother from Australia but can't email the foreign office in London," he said.
Mr Allan will take up his new job in January and in the interim will be building a team to work with him. His job, he said would include galvanising business, pushing forward adoption of the internet by government, negotiating regulatory issues internationally, addressing issues of social exclusion and making sure the recommendations in yesterday's report were implemented.
"Some of the figures that emerged in the report on Britain's place in the world league are disturbing," he said. "There is a lot to do because every other country is compiling this kind of report as well. But we have a lot of strengths and have done a lot to put foundations in place for the future. Underneath it all I'm an optimist."
