This Saturday morning I was fortunate enough to gain a private audience with the recently elected Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow. He was, unsurprisingly, a very pleasant man.
He arrived at the Bell Hotel in Winslow fresh from a coffee morning with the local Age Concern, ready to talk politics, tennis and David Bowie's ability to reinvent himself - a skill that every politician must wish to perfect. As well as controlling the chaotic circus that is Parliament on a daily basis, he is also quite an ordinary bloke it seems. He has a wife, Sally, and three young children. And drives a people carrier.
John spoke of his desire to be known as the man who reformed Parliament, moving from its archaic roots into the 21st Century.
I am now in the process of writing up my jolly little conversation with one of the political men of the moment into a beautiful feature for my dissertation magazine. I shall leave you with this tantalizing morsel:
Freddie, his three year old, apparently said as John left for work recently, "Goodbye Daddy, Speaker of the House." How frightfully sweet.
