I always said Oona would go on to great things because I could see she had real political acumen. The only thing she wasn't good at was managing a diary, which meant I was never where I should have been. Once, I was heading for a meeting in the wrong direction in a taxi which then crashed, so I had to run to the right address. It was a nightmare, and of course when I told Oona she was terribly apologetic and serious about it. But after a while we both burst out laughing. It was just the thought of this poor taxi driver sitting on the pavement crying because his car was wrecked, and me crying because my life was in ruins.
She sometimes gets herself into pickles. Nothing goes disastrously wrong, but there's a little twist of fate and suddenly all her plans have changed. There's always a slight edge of chaos, yet she's very focused.
I was part of her life when she was preparing for her wedding. Dear, oh dear! What a massive exercise that was! I don't go in for that kind of thing, but the wedding was lovely. Her husband, Tiberio Santomarco, is very long-suffering.
We both have tantrums about things, but never with each other. We never disagree on political issues either. I don't even have to ask her, I just know her views are the same as mine on anything from freedom of information to single parents. She's also deeply caring. She's a very important role model for women. She's also a great asset to the Labour Party - a young black woman who went to the local comprehensive and has her roots in the local community.
People have labelled us as Old Labour and New Labour, but I hate that definition. We're a mixture of both. The main difference is our age and our roots. Oona is a Londoner through and through, whereas I was brought up in north Wales. Also, politically, my family were steeped in the Party, whereas hers was not. However, her dad was a Vietnam draft dodger so she's always had a strong political motivation.
Before she worked with me, she hadn't specialised in development, but it was no surprise to me when she chose to be on the select committee on international development, which monitors Britain's money spent on development and reports back from places such as Mozambique and Rwanda. It was incredible being with Oona in Zambia last month. We went to promote Oxfam's education campaign because the literacy levels and school attendance levels in Zambia are some of the worst in the world. I think we made a great double act. We held meetings with teachers and parents, and because we weren't in competition with each other, we could balance the subject and manage the answers.
Oona King My first impression of Glenys was that she wasn't like a normal politician. By that I mean she hadn't had all the humour entirely squeezed out of her. That's probably why we get on so well. It depends, of course, whether you meet Glenys on or off the record. On the record, she's one of the most accomplished parliamentarians. Off the record, she's one of the funniest people you'd ever wish to have a laugh with. She's quieter than me, because after so many years of being at the very heart of British politics (literally in the belly of the beast) she's learned to be more restrained. But when she's not in public she's far, far more outrageous than I am.
She's not bossy and was never frightening to work for but she's forceful and she usually gets what she wants. When she doesn't, the inside of her office will probably get to hear about it, but never the outside. She's almost demure outside. She's taught me a lot. I remember putting out a press release in which I repeated a joke she'd made about 'such and such' being about as funny as Michael Portillo with a broken hair dryer. I thought it was quite entertaining and astute, but when she saw it she just gave me this withering look. She didn't want people to think she was just there to make jokes. 'That's not the way you change things in politics,' she said. She was right. Five years later, I'm now an MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and I would never do that.
We quarrelled all the time, though never seriously. It was often because Glenys thought she'd given me a piece of paper when I was sure she hadn't. I think I was utterly on top of every aspect of my job, with the exception of the diary, which we continually argued over. I'd send her to the wrong country with a speech I'd prepared on the wrong issue. If you work for a high-profile politician, the diary will probably kill you in the end. I remember Neil Kinnock often ringing me at 11pm wanting to know which country his wife was in.
We share a similar sense of humour, which is quite sarcastic and fairly dry, but you can't use that in public too much because people misunderstand it. I've learned there are times to be serious and times not to be serious.
Many politicians might think, what's the point of a field trip like ours, but Glenys always reminds me that this is the only way of getting to the essence, to the loss and the suffering. You can't imagine the enthusiasm she brought to Zambia. Seeing her with 40 five- to 10-year-olds clapping and singing songs brought joy to everyone's faces. She was a teacher for 30 years and she's got a real talent for it. She arranged for some schools there to twin with schools from her own constituency. We never stopped being shocked: more teachers were dying of Aids than passing through training.
In Brussels, we spent 12 hours a day together, but when I got elected and had my own constituency to look after, I stopped being as close with virtually everyone I'd been close with before - that's the very, very worst thing about being a politician.
Oxfam's Education Now campaign (01865 313 123)
