Lord Bonkers' Diary: Ming and the diamonds

I am sorry to hear that Menzies Campbell has got himself caught up in this “blood diamonds” business in Central Africa – it seems so out of character.

I can only assume that Elspeth put him up to it.

Earlier this week

By-election fixing

Michael White reviews Ming's memoirs

From this morning's Guardian:

Yet by most standards Sir Ming has had a wonderful life, full of laughter and the clink of glasses, one in which persistent naivety towards colleagues and the media reflect greatly to his personal credit. As does his evidently blissful marriage to the formidable, chain-smoking Elspeth Urquhart, daughter of an Arnhem general.

"That's good. My father told me never to trust men who order half bottles," she explains when Ming buys a bottle of white on their first date. Now if Elspeth had been leader of those soggy Lib Dems she'd have court-martialled the lot of them. And won.

Ming Campbell's memoirs to be published in March

So says the redoubtable Elspeth in this Sunday Times interview.

And I, for one, am not going to argue with her.

The interview also says Elspeth is pleased that Ming intends to stand at the next election.

Strictly Come Dancing and the Lib Dem leadership

I have just got back from Westminster after forming part of a panel of Lib Dem bloggers who interviewed Vince Cable earlier this evening.

I shall be writing about Vince in Friday's Liberal Democrat News, and no doubt other bloggers will post there impressions before that. You will not be surprised to know that out conversation touched upon Vince's enthusiasm for ballroom dancing.

There is an irony here. Last summer there was an ill-fated attempt to "put the zing into Ming" under the aegis of the PR guru and former Liberal candidate Gavin Grant. As I wrote on Guardian Unlimited at the time:

When Gavin Grant's appointment was announced, a Lib Dem MP told the press that Grant had gone up to Campbell hotel room where he was preparing for a speech and "found him with a plate of fish and chips on his lap watching Strictly Come Dancing". The unnamed MP added: "That is the side people never see".

Which is hardly surprising, as that side does not exist. While Campbell's redoubtable wife Elspeth has a taste for demotic television - she famously completed a dissertation on the matriarchs of Coronation Street - she does not seem the type to take kindly to fish and chips in her hotel bedroom.

Besides, the Conservative blogger Iain Dale has examined the TV schedules during this year's Lib Dem spring conference, when this incident is supposed to have taken place, and found that Strictly Come Dancing was not being shown - and nor was Strictly Dance Fever or any other such programme.

Now we have a leader who does watch Strictly Come Dancing and would even like to appear on it one day. It's funny how things turn out.

Elspeth unplugged

There is a substantial interview with one of this blog's heroines - Elspeth Campbell - on the Evening Standard site:

"I just want him to do the best possible job he can, although my prime concern is that he stays healthy. But you know, if the polls result in a hung Parliament, he could be a significant player come the election. People are beginning to recognise that fact."

A bride too far

Yesterday's Sunday Times had an article on Elspeth (wife of Ming) Campbell's memories of her father Major-General Roy Urquhart.

As everyone knows by now, Urquhart was the character played by Sean Connery in the film A Bridge Too Far:

During the course of filming Urquhart got to know Connery and “because they both loved whisky and golf, they got on quite well”.

With apologies for the headline.

Two times a lady

Another profile of the redoubtable Elspeth Campbell, this time from the Scottish edition of the Sunday Times:

Elspeth became Lady Elspeth for the second time in her life when Menzies was knighted in 2004.

It also repeats an anecdote I have read elsewhere:

Campbell’s former career as a sprinter is one of which his wife is conspicuously proud. She is fond of boasting that he was once “the fastest white man in the world”. To which her husband often adds: “For about three weeks in 1967.” At their wedding the best man had teased them about the swiftness of their union by joking that Britain’s fastest man had married Britain’s fastest woman.

There goes my second peerage.

Elspeth Campbell

I think a new star may have been born.

Yesterday I pointed to a profile of Lady Ming on the BBC website. There was also one by Michael White in this morning's Guardian.

Better still, try this profile in the Scottish Field. You have to subscribe to read the whole thing, but the free sample is wonderful as it is:

After two years the family moved to peaceful occupied Austria and her photo albums show a large sugar pink house beside Lake Woethersee, where the children skied, swam, played tennis and rode. Her father had an official train and there were trips to Vienna to watch the changing of the guard at Shoenbrunn Palace, between the French, Russians, Americans and British.

The power behind the throne?

Lord Bonkers recently wrote:

for years his beloved Elspeth has worn the trews in their household. She tells him “Menzies, we are not leaving Morningside” or “Menzies, you are to be leader,” as the mood takes her.

How fair was the old brute? Judge for yourself: the BBC website has a profile of the redoubtable Lady Campbell.