WHAT do I remember most about that night a long, long, time ago in a restaurant far away?
A thin and crispy Tarte Flambe smeared with fromage frais and dotted with crisp onion that to this down-table Evening Times reporter was even better than the pizza I had been brought up on.
I remember too Boris Johnson. Across the table hoovering up slices of this Strasbourg sensation and speaking in tones that I had only ever heard before when Nicholas Soames MP, that poster boy for the Eat The Rich campaign was rolled out for telly. Mwah, mwah, mwah Boris drawled, ho, ho, ho everybody laughed.
The Herald’s Murray Ritchie the doyen of the European parliament press corps at that time had invited me along.“Boris is coming and he’s a laugh,” he said. Someone added: “He slaughters Europe but loves being in it.” And they were right. On both counts. In fact everyone seemed spellbound.
Surprisingly so, I thought considering Boris was then merely the Daily Telegraph’s reporter in Europe, a plum entree to journalism he had been given after apparently meeting the paper’s editor Max Hastings at a cocktail party. Ah, yes but you’re forgetting Boris has been to Eton, it was whispered. I left the dinner confidently predicting a global sensation. That Tarte Flambe. How wrong I was. It was never heard of again.
While Boris went on to be such a journalistic sensation that for many years after certain newspaper editors would only hire posh boys with pudding bowl haircuts that they met at cocktail parties. Of course, Michael Gove was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth more raised with a silver darling in it, by his family of Aberdeen fish merchants. He did not go to Eton and I don’t remember ever eating in his company.
Though I spent some time in it when we were striking reporters on the Press and Journal in Aberdeen. Maybe there was a pie or two consumed, a curled sandwich at the deadly-dull meetings for trainees we attended pre-strike eruption? I forget. Yes his studied manners and incongruously not-even-slightly Aberdonian accent stuck out on the picket line. Yes they were chuckled over. But he had been president of the Oxford Union, people whispered.
He seemed pleasant and quiet and as Kate Sutherland’s surely soon-to-famous strike photographs show he certainly did the right thing. I met him again many years later backstage at either a Tory or Labour Party Conference. I forget which. I was sitting in Piers Morgan’s orbit and after brief pleasantries Mr Gove quickly and not very subtly assessed me to see if I was working in the important end of the Daily Mirror empire. Having worked out the answer was no, he sailed off. I forget whether he was with the Times then or the Tory party. It was hard to tell.
I did notice though his eyes had become as cold as those fish his family once sold. Destined for greatness? As a Lord Varys? Or a Jeeves to Johnson’s Wooster? Maybe. Prime Minister? My money is back on that Tarte Flambe.
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