For years the deputy prime minister appeared on LBC radio on a programme called Call Clegg. Yesterday, he was back, sort of, in a memorial appearance in honour of himself.
“It’s Call . . .” began the show’s host, Nick Ferrari. “Well, it’s not Call Clegg.”
There was something poignant about Not Call Clegg. Most of us have bodies that are made up of about 60 per cent water. Nick Clegg is different: he is made up of 60 per cent optimism. He is a scientific wonder and surely deserves to be studied in a lab.
So, he was asked, did he now regret going into coalition?
“Not for one millisecond!” cried Mr Clegg.
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But, protested Ferrari, you’ve destroyed your party!
“No I haven’t! Liberalism will survive. The Liberal Democrats will bounce back.”
Bounce back? It would be a pretty feeble bounce, more of a tiny rise, like a sparrow breathing, what with there now being only eight, as opposed to 56, left on the great trampoline of politics. Still, that’s not how Mr Clegg sees it. Those who are writing post-mortems had it all wrong.
But, protested Ferrari, who conducted the interview in varying tones of amazement, you can now hold your meetings in a mini-bus!
“In fact,” chirped Mr Clegg, “there were many high points . . .”
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His high points were, again, touching, very Lib Dem. There was the closing of the “attainment gap”, taking people out of paying tax, reforming pensions . . .
Ferrari stopped him in mid-high point. What, he asked, sort of brief did he want now?
“Brief?” asked Mr Clegg, puzzled.
What job would he like? “Not undergarments,” he said.
You have to laugh. Nothing was pants in Mr Clegg’s world. He refused to acknowledge the treachery of Vince Cable. He blamed the SNP for the cataclysmic election result, both directly in Scotland, but also in England, where voters voted Tory out of fear of the SNP having some sort of control. “We actually ran a very professional, dynamic, energetic campaign!”
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Ferrari couldn’t contain himself: “Oh, Mr Clegg!”
“Hang on a minute!” chirped Mr Clegg.
He admitted to one down moment, just after seeing the exit poll on election night. “The first thing I do is reach for a cigarette, not having smoked for about two and a half months. I have stopped again, by the way, so don’t worry. Sanity has been restored!”
Who had the cigarettes?
“I’d left a pack rather helpfully in my flat in Sheffield.” (Does this really sound like a man who hadn’t smoked for two and half months?) “Can we just not talk about my smoking?” But faced with talking about all of the Lib Dems’ amazing high points, not to mention its brilliant campaign, Ferrari did return to smoking, noting that Mr Clegg had a bad cough.
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“Look, let’s move on!” he insisted. “I took a short break with some friends to the south of France. And I went swimming in some beautiful wild rivers.”
What’s this got to do with smoking? “It’s my throat. So blame the French rivers, don’t blame cigarettes!”
So Mr Clegg has no complaints, other than against wild rivers. I am not sure if the Lib Dems will bounce back but I am convinced that if I dropped Mr Clegg, he would. The man belongs in a petri dish.