So, who are the 30?
Written by Alex Foster on 5th April 2008 – 1:33 pmThe Daily Mail is hot on the heels of the “fewer than thirty women” that our leader Nick Clegg has apparently bedded. It can exclusively reveal that Helena Bonham-Carter is not amongst the 30. Well done, Daily Mail. One woman down. Only another 3,399,745,541 women left on the planet to rule out.
On another page of the same rag, columnist Amanda Platell roundly condemns the number, but somewhat glosses over her own sexual experience. Since coy Miss Platell is unmarried, I can only assume she is either a virgin or a hypocrite. A staggering number of those commenting manage to link Clegg’s dalliances with the vote on the Euro referendum. Which is quite an imaginative stretch.
Steve Richards on the Indy blog foreshadows a Radio 4 discussion that will have aired by the time this is published. The political commentators are not impressed. Fellow Indy blogger Catherine Townsend is much more forgiving. As you might hope from someone who writes a blog called Sleeping Around.
The Eastern Daily Press is equally sanguine. So what? they say, Nick is upping his street cred. The Oxford Mail’s ‘Insider’ is happy to hint at many more notches on his bedpost than Clegg’s.
And the Guardian takes a wider view, finding Clegg’s tally reasonably normal, before taking off around the country to ask random strangers how many people they’ve slept with. Something tells me this isn’t something I’ll be vox popping on come conference time…
Posted in News
5th April 2008 at 2:39 pm
This farago is an example of the media deliberately misunderstanding a clearly flippant answer.
I doubt it will do any long-term damage to Nick.
5th April 2008 at 3:36 pm
Given that my total is quite a bit larger than Nick’s, I am both surprised and dismayed at the opprobrium that has been heaped on him over this. Thirty is really not that big a number, is it?
5th April 2008 at 5:11 pm
You should do that at autumn conference, Alex.
“How many people have you slept with? And how many this week?”
5th April 2008 at 6:04 pm
Bloody hell, I’ve got some catching up to do.
5th April 2008 at 6:36 pm
I’m with Millenium: he thinks we should get Paddy in for some training as Nick’s total is shockingly low for a Lib Dem leader
5th April 2008 at 8:01 pm
There’s a poll at Iain Dale’s Diary. He runs us through when we lost our virginity, how many partner’s we’ve had, what “political fantasies” we have (I myself don’t have any, it’s not an idea that’s entered my head before). And it’s all done by political party.
5th April 2008 at 8:02 pm
I’ve done the unthinkable and put an apostrophe into the word “partners”. I feel really ashamed of myself now
5th April 2008 at 8:05 pm
I see my ideas are getting stolen by quite highranking bloggers then…
* goes to vote anyway *
5th April 2008 at 11:13 pm
I have just seen Millennium’s piece on this, which is quite similar to but better than what I wrote. Apols to the Elephant for appearing to plagiarise, which I promise I didn’t. I’ve been avoiding his writings because I am not uptodate with Torchwood.
5th April 2008 at 11:38 pm
All very well, but of course people giving plaudits to Nick Clegg for his HONESTY really need to explain why he refused to answer the question about drugs (shock, horror!) - or indeed, why he initially attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to dodge the questions about sex.
Or if they think this approach is such a rip-roaring success, they should email him for those answers about drugs, and post them here when they have them. And while they’re about it, they should check whether he’d be up for a few supplementary questions - on both subjects …
Chris Phillips
6th April 2008 at 1:10 pm
Fewer than thirty includes everything from 1 to 29 (we assume at least 1 because of his children…)
So this may simply be a way of hiding an unhip low number!
6th April 2008 at 1:49 pm
Indeed, it appears that Clegg himself now thinks he would have done better not to answer the questions about his sexual history:
.
“He was asked [on the Andrew Marr show] about the GQ interview in which he talked about the number of sexual partners he had, but would not talk about his drug use.
Mr Clegg said he probably should be “consistent on both - and private on both”.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7333051.stm
Chris Phillips
6th April 2008 at 1:55 pm
Which is disappointing. Clegg’s main attraction for me was his honesty. I think he should have been open about both.
* shrug *
Still, I’m used to being a minority.
6th April 2008 at 2:19 pm
I exclusively revealed who the 30 are earlier in the week on my blog.