Appearance: Vampish versifier.
Status: Leading contender for the post of Poet Laureate, vacant since the death of Ted Hughes in October.
Was it really that long ago? How come it's taken so long to find a successor? Spin.
Spin? Yes, No 10 has been desperate to find a laureate who will 'play well'.
Surely you mean write well. Oh, you poor naive fool.
What have they been looking for? Someone young, whizzy and accessible: a people's poet, a poet for the next millennium, a poet embodying Cool Britannia. Someone as far removed from Dryden, Wordsworth and Tennyson as possible.
And does Carol Ann fit the bill? Well, she's young-ish, was born in Glasgow to left wing parents and brought up in the Gorbals, is highly regarded, brilliant at readings, a feminist, combines wit with a bleak realism, and has been described as 'the characteristic English poet of the 80s and 90s'.
Sounds marvellous. Get her in. There's just one problem.
Doesn't she want it? You're thinking of Seamus Heaney and Tony Harrison.
Is she too left wing? Well, she did write a poem for Princess Diana which included the lines 'England's crown is rusting. /The century bleeds to its end.' But neither the Queen nor New Labourites appear to object to that.
So what's the obstacle? She's a lesbian.
You're not homophobic, are you? I'm not, but Tony Blair is reported to be worried about 'how it might play in Middle England'.
So who'll get the job if she doesn't? Who knows? Arts Council apparatchik Andrew Motion; the youthful Simon Armitage; the sonneteer of spin Alastair Campbell; how are your iambic pentameters?
Do say: 'How would Auden, Byron and Rochester have played in Middle England?'
Don't say: 'Since the laureate's first task will be to write an ode celebrating the nuptials of Edward and Sophie, wouldn't it be better just to scrap the whole thing?'
