Lord Bonkers' Diary: Suspended by the bigwigs

I managed to put him off yesterday, but I am afraid it is time to spend another week with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

He begins with some characteristically trenchant views.

Monday

Meadowcroft emerges from his potting shed displaying an unwonted sense of urgency. “Steel’s been suspended by the bigwigs,” he informs me. “I’m not surprised,” I reply. “Do you remember when he persuaded us to stand down in half the seats in the country to make way for the SDP Party? No good came of it. Well I never thought it would.”

It turns out that he has been suspended for quite another reason. It has emerged that all those stories one heard about the appalling Cyril Smith were true and, what’s more, he admitted as much to Steel, who promptly did chuff all about it and later nominated him for a knighthood. No wonder E.W. Swinson was up in arms.

Smith, whom I once described as “Extremely Large”, was one of many politicians I was at pains to keep away from my Home for Well-Behaved Orphans. There were times when I had a whole phalanx of gamekeepers deployed with their orchard doughties to keep these undesirables away. All power to this inquiry’s elbow, I say.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.