‘I took grandkids to Downing Street party – and no Thatcher Milk Snatcher this time’
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IT’S party season so heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to Downing Street we go for the annual screamathon for young ’uns of political scribblers – including yours truly. And before anybody goes full Grinch, we chucked in £15 a head so there was zero cost to the public a day after WASPI women had their Christmas cancelled. Little L and Canny C were my passports to two-hours of noisy mayhem, the likes of which had not been seen at Britain’s most famous address since Boris Johnson’s infamous Covid parties.
Back in the era before iPhones, the bash was thrown in Parliament and their mother – then a toddler – survived a brush with Maggie Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. Somewhere, there’s a photograph of the Rusted Lady (a PM I despised) running her Tory fingers along the seam of my daughter’s splendid red dress, admiring the stitching in that sinister deep voice.
This diehard socialist was unfazed by the unwelcome attention. Georgia’s inoculations were bang up to date. Rachel Reeves is an altogether warmer politician – a Labour Chancellor in a taxing job clearly pained by unpopular decisions she blames on the Tory blackhole.
The Chancellor’s state rooms at 11 Downing Street hosted the gig and she good-naturedly popped her head around the door to smile at the disorder before wisely scarpering – a manoeuvre successful politicians perform expertly. Little L and Canny C had the time of their lives, despite my conviction that children’s entertainers are wasted on kids.
Mr Marvel was a marvel, his target audience laughing and singing and jumping up and down as the human ball of energy strutted his stuff. We supposed grown-ups enjoyed the daftness just as much – and probably more – and the slapstick Punch & Judy show was all the funnier now the hammer-bashing domestic violence of yore is left under the pier.
