It’s time to revive an old fave. Among a packed field this week: Nick ‘Doctor Who’ Fletcher and Jon ‘dead cat’ Trickett
When I first started on this newspaper’s Diary column (still this millennium, but only just), we had a rolling competition called Stupidest MP, which aimed to celebrate Westminster’s non-finest minds. So many memories – too many to choose from, in some ways. But Archie Hamilton, then Tory member for Epsom and Ewell and a former 1922 committee chairman, was a perennial candidate. The Diary had previously contacted Sir Archie asking if he would sit an intelligence test, to which he had tentatively – and indeed bizarrely – agreed, as long as others did it with him. Alas, what we might politely term a “peer group” could not be found for some years.
But everything changed when news emerged of a “talking” chimpanzee named Panbanisha that resided at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa. A call to Hamilton’s office was immediately placed. When he came to the phone, Sir Archie was asked whether he had seen the stories about this creature. He had? Very good. In which case: would he be willing to participate in an intelligence test against the chimp? Very regrettably, Sir Archie declined the opportunity, forcing the Diary to make a subsequent call to Conservative Central Office. “We can’t say to him ‘You must do it’,” fretted a press officer there. “If it’s something he feels he couldn’t do well, we can’t make him.” Understood. Had she any other suggestions? “What about someone from our education team? There’s Theresa May … ”
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
