Letts Pointlessly Smear Clegg

The gratuitous attacks by the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre on politicians who are not allied to Young Dave do not end with Mil The Younger, and to demonstrate this has come Quentin Letts (let’s not) with a pointless and spiteful hatchet job on Corporal Clegg, who has committed the heinous crime of, er, appearing on the Lorraine show with his wife.

Harry Potter and the Gobshite of Arslikhan

Quent is, on this occasion, even more desperate that usual, which may be down to his being forced to watch this ghastly proletarian broadcast experience and then make something up about it. I mean, the poor dear would normally be having a lie in at his club, followed by a leisurely breakfast and an approving perusal of his previous day’s handiwork in the Daily Mail.

The tone is set early on as Letts derides Clegg as a “halfwit”. Very good Quent, he speaks five languages (four more than you), and has been elected to both the European and UK Parliaments. I suspect he is also capable of taking notes at presentations. But it is what the Lib Dem leader got up to in the Lorraine show’s kitchen that really gets the Letts goat.

He chopped the carrots too slowly. He grated too much Red Leicester (Quent so disliked this aspect that he mentioned it twice). He failed to correctly identify fresh basil (and so sodding what, most folk might struggle, given their only knowledge of herbs is to find them pre-prepared in an appropriately labelled jar). And, worst of all, the Deputy Prime Minister did not wear an apron.

HE DIDN’T WEAR AN APRON? Oh just f*** right off Quent, that’s so intercoursing feeble it’s not true. Can it get any more lame? You betcha, says Sarah: Letts has to have a dig at Clegg’s wife. Because she’s Spanish, and that’s foreign. Let me guess the line of attack. “Mr Clegg did not travel to the ITV studios alone. He took with him his lovely wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez – the castanet clacker!”

Zelo Street regulars will remember this one from some time back. And that it is another example of Letts’ geographical ineptitude. You wouldn’t call someone from Newcastle a Bristolian, would you? Perhaps castanets are one of those few things that Quent knows about Spain. But they don’t do castanets where Ms Gonzalez Durantez hails from (Olmedo, and I doubt Letts knows where that is, either).

But he does know that “Senora Clegg is a TV natural, elegant, soft-spoken – and subtly ruthless about insisting that she ‘keeps out of politics’. Likely tale! What was she doing on this show if it was not a blatantly political act?” SHE’S HIS SODDING WIFE, THAT’S WHAT SHE WAS DOING.

The Mail hates Clegg. We know that already.