John Peel's dream of 101 Sharons

One you may have missed from December 29th 2006

I am always a bit late reading books. I have just got round to John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft’s “Margrave of the marshes”.

It is a wonderful book and underlines what a wonderful chap Peel was. It is a shame that John Peel only got round to writing about a third of the book. The third that he did write is absolutely fascinatingly and beautifully written. The tales of his time in the USA are priceless. His tale of his meeting with John F Kennedy would be unbelievable had it not been accompanied by two remarkable photos, taken by Peel in Dallas, of the great man.

A paragraph written by Peel’s wife, Sheila, deserves to be engraved on Peel’s tombstone. He ran a record label called Dandelion Records. I have one of the albums released on it somewhere. Sheila Ravenscroft writes:

Sadly John never raised the funds necessary to finance the 101 Sharons, his pet Dandelion project for which he planned to gather together 101 women called Sharon, lock them in a studio and refuse to release them until they’d recorded an album.

Clegg: "David Cameron is amazingly flaky on foreign affairs"

….a quote from 2007, I hasten to add.

In order to prepare a series of “Ones you may have missed”, I have been trawling through my archives recently – as you do.

I came across this post from November 2007 where a few bloggers and myself interviewed Nick Clegg in Portcullis House, as part of the Liberal Democrat leadership contest.

It contains a reflection on David Cameron’s skills regarding foreign affairs which turns out to be remarkably relevant now.

Nick Clegg observed that David Cameron is ‘amazingly flaky on foreign affairs’, citing his ridiculous promise to leave the EPP during the Conservative leadership election campaign.

In the same interview, it was abundantly clear that Nick Clegg is amazingly knowledgeable, skilled and fluent in foreign affairs and, indeed, languages.

With David Cameron’s foreign affairs blunders over the last few weeks (I am thinking particularly of him criticising Pakistan in India, but there have been other blunders of less magnitude) that description of David Cameron as being “amazingly flaky on foreign affairs” turns out to have been remarkably prescient.

It makes you wonder…. Should Nick be there at David Cameron’s elbow when he goes abroad? Or should Nick swap places with Cameron and do the foreign affairs stuff? A cheeky suggestion, I know….