I wasn’t alone either, lots of people from unions GMB and Unison arrived in the hope of being able to say ‘hi’ too but unfortunately we were to be disappointed. As the crowd stood waiting for our illustrious leader to arrive a bus load of hand picked people were shipped into the hall, smartly dressed and clutching non-threatening questions; well you wouldn’t want Dave to have to think on his feet would you?
Eventually Dave turned up about ninety minutes late, meaning that most of the people with jobs to go to had melted away by the time he arrived, leaving only a handful behind. Mind you if DC and Cleggy-boy have anything to say these people won’t have pesky jobs to go to soon, so they’ll be able to hang around waiting for him to their hearts’ content.
Another mistake the anxious crowd made was they thought he’d be walking in through the front entrance and dutifully waited for him there. Imagine their surprise when he snuck in unannounced around the back. Such a modest man, not wanting to make a fuss. Strange to think that he’d rather sneak in a back door rather than meet the people with spontaneous questions to ask him, it was almost as though he was avoiding them. Surely not, what with him and Clegg wanting to engage the nation so much.
I was actually hoping Nick Clegg turned up with his boss, sorry… civil partner, I mean coalition colleague, because I wanted to ask him if he could pull the knife out of my back that he accidentally stuck there during the general election. It is still sore you know.
In the end only about eight teenagers, presumably on the summer break before going back to sixth form, were left out back waiting for him. A young lad with a guitar accompanied by a young girl sang lovely catchy protest chants in the hope of serenading our Dave as he left the building, but they were to be disappointed. The young lad was genius in his playing because he left his guitar out of tune, I suppose in some avant-garde fashion that I don’t understand now that I’m getting on a bit. And I think the girl thought Dave might be so impressed with her singing that he would have a word with his mates Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan about getting her on the X-Factor or Britain’s Got No Talent. She must have thought that because there’s no other reason for her turning up caked in make-up, wearing a gold lamé jacket and a wide brimmed hat. She was obviously a future pop star because she also sported odd shoes and did Christina Aquillera hand gestures while she sang. Badly.
I was told later, when all the excitement was over and I was making a cup of tea, that when Dave was at the West Hove School just before coming to my place of work, the moment the cameras stopped filming he refused to speak to anyone, adults and kids alike, and quickly legged it away before you could say ‘crap policies’. Bless him, he must have been tired. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to speak to us at Hove Town Hall. It must be tough being Prime Minister.
