There are occasions when quotidian concerns must be set aside. Who having heard the momentous news will wish to read of the affair of Lord Goodman and my silver teaspoons? Who now will worry that in the 1950s the lights in the House would frequently go out just as Gaitskell appeared to be winning the debate. Who, even, will wonder at the accession of King Abdela to the throne of Jordan? (A courageous choice by the Jordanians, but also, I judge, a wise one.) So, just as I did upon the publication of Gladstone's Life of Jenkins, I have suspended my usual journal of events. I present instead a heartfelt tribute to our departing leader.
I first met Paddy Ashtray in the library at Bonkers House in Belgrave Square. Shortly preceded by a stun grenade and an impressive quantity of smoke, he had burst in through the french windows. After I had picked myself off the floor, dusted down the butler and pointed out that he probably wanted the Embassy next door, he was all apologies. This, I reflected even then, was the sort of chap one could do with on one's side in a closely fought by-election. His selection as candidate for Yeovil cheered me greatly, and I was not surprised when, aided by the famous slope, he captured the seat in 1983.
No one remembers it now, but this was the time of "The Alliance". Little Steel had got it into his head that people expected politicians to get along with one another. As I frequently pointed out to him, the voters have far more sense than that, but he was not to be shifted. Thus it was that he and Dr Owen toured the country, towing a double bed behind their battlebus. In each town they visited they would park in the marketplace, leap out of the charabanc and hop into bed together. Owen would proceed to make a speech about his time as Foreign Secretary, while Steel gave him admiring glances and made encouraging little noises. This display did give me the chance to confirm what I had long suspected - namely, that Steel's pyjama jacket had a white collar, just like all his blue shirts - but it was understandably unpopular with the public at large. (Particularly, I might add, in the Scottish Borders, where they don't care for That Sort Of Thing.) After this, Steel's days were numbered, but before his fingers could be prised from the wheel, he connived a disastrous merger. It was in these circumstances that Paddy Ashgrove inherited the leadership.
My younger readers may not appreciate quite how grim things were in those days, Take the party's headquarters in Cowley Street, for instance. In those days a Chinese laundry occupied the basement, and a Spiritualist church the larger part of the ground floor. Some extremely friendly young ladies entertained gentlemen visitors on the upper floors - or so I am informed - and barefoot children played on the pavement outside. It is a tribute to Ashridge's leadership qualities that he was able, from these unpropitious beginnings, to forge the formidable fighting force that is today's Liberal Democrats.
Tribute, however, should be paid to the team which Ashburnham assembled about him. Leaving aside my own efforts, which I am characteristically chary to mention here, one can point to Menzies Campbell (surely the fastest newsagent of his generation?), Sugar Ray Michie (the undefeated welterweight champion of Bute), Miss Fearn (always quick to place a steadying hand on the tiller) and Matthew Taylor (whose success in the eleven plus so cheered the party in its darkest hour). Add to these such luminaries as the Revd Hughes, Earl Russell and his Big Band, and the Admirable Beith, and it is less of a surprise that Ashcan met with the success he did.
Council after council fell to our campaigning, and by-elections were won in Chichester, Newbury, Beastly Eastleigh and Littleborough and Saddleworth, where I myself went over the top. Then in 1997 came our resounding success in the general election, which brought us parliamentary seats in numbers undreamed of since the days of my old friend Lloyd George. A happy consequence of this triumph was the addition of many new talents to our strength. One thinks of the formidable Mrs Bollard, of Five Brains Webb and of Norman Baker - though in the last case, not for terribly long.
Now comes the sad part of my story. Just at what should have been his hour of triumph, Ashby de la Zouch fell among bad company. You may recall something called "The Labour Party", which for many years had one Neil Kinnock (a self-confessed Welshman) in charge. After his departure came John Smith, who did, I must say, seem a decent sort of cove for a Socialist. Upon Smith's untimely death, however, the Labour Party was dissolved and replaced by the New Party.
The leadership of this organisation - I have in mind particularly Blair and Mendelssohn - were on the chummiest of terms with our own Lord Jenkins. Jenkins, fancying himself as something of an historian, had got it into his head that the reason the Tories kept winning was because they were faced by two opposing parties. All that need happen, the man reasoned, was for the New Party to swallow the Liberals. Then, the Conservatives would be permanently in opposition and he would be kept in agreeable dinners for the rest of his life. You may well think this nonsense. After all, in the 1950s, when for several years the Liberal Party consisted of Clement Davies, yours truly and Clement Davies' spaniel Duncan, you could hardly toss a brick without beaning a Tory MP. Be that as it may, Ashford thought it was all Terribly Clever.
If Jenkins' pouring claret in the king's ear were not bad enough, we soon realised that Ashmount had fallen in love - not, like so many politicians, with himself, but with the Prime Minister. He took to writing poems in praise of Blair, and it was when he began to insist upon reading these to meetings of the Federal Policy Committee that a number of us decided that Something Had To Be Done. Had Ashdongle not made his announcement the other week, then I fear extreme measures would by now be in hand.
Had Ashenden chosen his advisers more carefully, he might well have led us for years to come. As it is, we are faced with an election for the post. The bookies' favourite is Charles Kennedy, but would he be given enough time off from TV's Whose Sausage? to do the job? I think not. But let us not rush to choose. Why, for instance, does the new leader have to sit in the Commons at all? Is there not a strong case for having a peer as our leader? As to who that peer should be, I leave my readers to judge.
There is one, final question about Ashtrap's career which the historians will debate above all: would the man have got on better if he could have made up his mind what his surname was?
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10