TBH (to be honest) I was a bit peeved I was missing Mrs Thatcher’s centenary. She gets a lot of bad press, but I’ve really admired her ever since I realised I needed to to win over middle-England, which was shortly after I’d won over the Labour members by promising to renationalise everything she’d privatised. Morgan’s advice for talking about her and Donald are the same: ‘big them up as much as you like, just don’t mention miners.’
He made me wear a patriotic tie again. He said it screams “I’m British, don’t you dare offer me hummus”, which was annoying because I really like hummus, but I understood why he did it. If potential Reform voters knew I liked chickpeas and tahini, we’d end up with a ruling party willing to dehumanise refugees for short-term political ambition quicker than you can say ‘Shabana Mahmood.’
Trump and el-Sisi were co-chairing, Abbas was lurking like a forgotten uncle at a bar mitzvah, Bibi stayed at home to polish his warheads. Tony Blair made a brief cameo, but only after I said ‘Candyman’ into a mirror five times.
Morgan had told me to answer ‘two-state solution’ to anything I was asked, which went well until I got distracted by the crab claws on the buffet and I said it to a Fox News journalist who’d just asked me how I was going to rescue London from the clutches Sharia Law.
The easiest part of the day was my tribute to Donald. He’d pre-scripted what I had to say in exchange for a very competitive 5% tariff on Marmite.
I knew it was important not to upset the US, particularly as they were the ones footing the bill for the fireworks (which isn’t a clumsy metaphor for them arming Israel’s genocide, Diary. I know you’re an inanimate object, but so is Chris Mason and he occasionally bests me.)
Truth be told, I’m knackered. Two years of this mess, and all I’ve got is a nagging sense that F35 parts and ‘Israel’s right to cut off water in Gaza’ are going to get mentioned at St Peter’s Gates.
Got a call from the Daily Express on the flight home asking about my Hamas sympathies. Apparently I’d been overheard saying to President Macron ‘I all I want is Hamas’ at the buffet. I assured them I was talking about hummus, but they said that was scarcely credible considering the tie I was wearing, and they’d be printing their own headlines anyway.
Still. Good news about the Marmite.