You might have had the same problem, I couldn’t understand how David Cameron could suddenly get into a brand-new job, almost the top job in the country, and still be able to wander about, in and out of schools and all sorts of places, presumably including his constituency, smiling all the time, and using the word ‘I’ instead of we or us, because I was absolutely certain he had to have other people helping him, and also there were people all over the world probably phoning him. Then I remembered a film I had seen decades ago, in which people were trying to kill Montgomery, but he had a double, a look-alike, and he really did look alike, because they used the same actor. Almost immediately I was satisfied that the country was being well looked after, because the real David Cameron was squirreling away in Downing Street, working away with his cohorts, while this double chap was chatting up people in Northern Ireland, Scotland, you name it.
I have had quite a few jobs in my time, and I have read about, or rather seen, for most of the time before television, pictures in the press of prime ministers from the mid-30s right up until the time Queen Elizabeth was crowned, when television became the tool for communication. I don’t remember that all these other prime ministers were shown in such detail in so many places in such a short time. This business of sound bites seems to be an essential part now of trying to justify your existence. I thought a Prime Minister didn’t have to justify himself by standing in front of a camera, it was what he did and what happened after he had done it was the criterion. With regard to the new jobs that I had, I don’t remember that I had all that much time to muck about, in the first few months, I was too busy getting to know my colleagues, understanding the system, and finding my feet, to even some days, missing lunch. But of course that was in the distant past, and we didn’t have computers, just pens and paper.
I just hope that I have settled your mind, as I have mine.