Direct line to the top for Isabelle
Old showbiz stars say you should never work with kids or animals, writes Peter Rhodes.
Old showbiz stars say you should never work with kids or animals, writes Peter Rhodes.
So what possessed David Cameron, facing a sea of eager hand-waving adults, to ask for the microphone to be passed to a little girl with a mischievous smile and pixie-ears hairband?
Seven-year-old Isabelle Kinghorn's question brought the house down at Windsor High School, Halesowen, the setting for last night's Cameron Direct public meeting.
"Why are you on the telly so much?" she asked simply.
As the laughter died down, David Cameron delivered an impromptu lecture on how democracy works, for Year Two kids.
"I'm on telly so much," he told Isabelle, "because in this country we have a choice about who we vote for.
"There's the blue team and the red team. And I'm trying to get people to give up on the red team and go for the blue team.
"Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes people just wish they could get on and watch the telly."
Isabelle was no Tory Party plant. She attended the meeting with her parents, Jessamy and Peter of Hasbury, Halesowen, both NHS workers.
The hall could have been designed for a Cameron rally. The curtains and even the notice boards were deep Tory blue. He spoke against a picture-board background of blue sky, white clouds and a motif looking suspiciously like an RAF roundel.
In shirtsleeves and looking slimmer than I recall, he clearly enjoyed this unpredictable, though mostly friendly session.
Those who hate Toffs will never vote for "Call me Dave" Cameron. But it is hard not to like the man.
When I first met him, four years ago, he was frightened to death of saying or doing the wrong thing. The Cameron we saw last night was eloquent but confident enough to admit he did not have all the answers.
Faced with a question about the idiocy of Black Country rail lines lying idle alongside jam-packed commuter roads, he said: "Now and then I get asked a question and I simply don't know the answer. But by Monday," he told the questioner, amid laughter, "I will have a brilliant answer for you."
The 53rd Cameron Direct, held in a Labour constituency, went so well that it was never going to be easy to find a dissenting view.
