Following Boris on stage at the Conference (or how to clear the room)
Waiting to come on stage to speak to the Party conference does make your heart beat. Especially when you're following Boris Johnson.
The hall had been packed with everyone wanting to hear their new hero. When I was shoved from almost total darkness out of the strange little white door at the back of the stage into the glaring white lights of the conference, the Hall had been full. I seemed to have an amazing effect in persuading everyone to choose that moment to go for their cup of tea! Except my job was to introduce a panel including Frederick Forsyth, Liam Fox and Simon Weston. So a good audience did stay.
All too soon the allotted two minutes are up. You're heart stops racing and you're off stage into the gloom of the backstage rabbit warren.
My bit had gone so fast that Boris and his entourage were still prowling. And I had a bone to pick with him. Last month I was in the Chorus singing Beethoven's Choral Symphony in the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. And Boris was there. He wrote almost gushingly in the Daily Telegraph about the value of the BBC Proms and warmly praised our singing, referring to us as the "silver haired chorus". Cheek!
So I challenged him find a single silver hair on my head, or suffer the penalty of singing Beethoven's chorus with me. And failing to find any grey, he sang. In a fine tenor voice Boris joined me in a burst from Beethoven: "Deine zaube binden weider was die mode streng getheilt, Alle Menschen werden Bruder, wo dein sanfter Flugel weit."
And then he translated it into perfect English. At that moment I forgave him the silver hair jibe. Wit, raconteur, singer,and modern Conservative; what a star!
