There’s an in-depth feature on Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in today’s Mail – well worth reading in full, but here’s some selected highlights:

On leadership:

His deputy and Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable is acknowledged to have been the wisest head in last year’s economic storm, but it’s a tribute to Clegg’s growing gravitas that people have mostly stopped saying the party chose the wrong man. He was strong during the expenses scandal, calling for a total reform of the system and positioning the Lib Dems as the party for people fed up with politicians.

On MPs’ expenses:

Clegg has also been lucky that his MPs have, on the whole, behaved themselves over expenses, being more likely to claim for a trouser press than a duck house. His own claims fall within the rules, but they still make me wonder: why on earth should we pay for his gardener, or to have his floors sanded?

‘As it happens, the property was not in a habitable state when I bought it,’ he says, insistently. ‘This is a semi-detached pebble-dashed property in a suburban part of Sheffield; it’s not glamorous. The garden was a total eyesore. I didn’t put duck ponds in or helipads. If I don’t keep it tidy, that’s a pain for the neighbours.

‘My attitude is that my second home isn’t mine. It’s the taxpayer’s home, on loan to me. I keep it in good nick and when I sell it, all the gain, pound for pound, goes back to the taxpayer.’

It appears that the Lib Dems have been far less imaginative with their expenses than their rivals. Labour and Conservative MPs have had a different approach, he says.

‘To my knowledge so far, not a single Liberal Democrat MP has received phantom mortgages or turned themselves from public servants into spivvy property speculators. Not a single one has avoided capital gains tax in a big way. If you are an MP for one of the big old parties and you know you could put a blue or a red rosette on a pig in your constituency and it would win, and you could ignore people, I think the rot sets in.

‘If you know that you can’t take any voters for granted, and you might not get re-elected, it’s human nature: you’ll keep a tight ship, you’ll keep your nose clean, you’ll work hard. We’ve never been arrogant enough to assume that we can take any seats for granted.’

On calling for the Speaker’s resignation:

Calling for the Speaker’s head was his most dramatic moment, but in today’s remarkably frank mood, Clegg is willing to admit that he didn’t really know what he was doing. ‘I really rather like Michael Martin as a man,’ he says. ‘It was just so obvious to me that given the public outcry about what was going on in Westminster, we needed a different Speaker to champion reform.’ He didn’t know that no party leader had told the Speaker to go since 1695.

‘I knew it wasn’t done,’ he says with a grin, ‘but I probably hadn’t quite twigged there was this unwritten rule that you can’t say things like that.’ He doesn’t regret it. ‘The leader of the Liberal Democrats should be prepared to break a few unwritten rules.’

On the fringe parties:

Out on the campaign trail for the recent local and Euro elections, he met ‘people who voted for the BNP who I genuinely don’t think know what the BNP stands for’. The same went for those who voted Green, he says.

‘The BNP believe in giving every 18-year-old an automatic rifle. The Greens believe in abolishing land-ownership rights. Full stop. They’re crackers.’ That’s a bit strong. Allying environmentalists with the far right might also upset some of his natural supporters. ‘The BNP are fascists, and the Greens – well, I’m not going to say they’re fascists, but they are on another planet.’ Does he despair of the public’s ignorance? ‘People voted out of anger, out of frustration, which I totally understand and don’t want to overlook, but I don’t think they were voting for what these parties stand for.’

The Lib Dems won a council and lost two, but their vote strengthened in urban areas, which they’re targeting. ‘We had an astonishing result: 28 per cent, second place overall, pushing Labour back into third,’ he says. There is, however, no denying that the simultaneous Euro election didn’t provide the breakthrough that was expected. ‘We held our own,’ he insists. ‘It was an incredibly crowded field with lots of people piling in from left, right and everywhere.’ He smiles, confidently. ‘I’m always going to say the glass is half full, aren’t I?’

On drugs:

Has he ever taken drugs? ‘I have always cast a veil over this,’ Clegg says quickly. ‘If I was a drug-taker when I was in public office, or seeking it, that’s one thing, but how far am I supposed to go back to explain what I did or didn’t do? Next you’ll say to me, “Did you throw sand in the sandpit?”‘

This is the first time he has clammed up, I say, which suggests something to hide. His eyes flash. They say he has a temper, but he keeps it under control now. ‘Am I entitled to any privacy? There has to be, surely, some space that I keep my own, that has got nothing to do with my job.’

On celebrity friends:

… he hung out with people who would one day be famous, acting alongside Helena Bonham Carter in a play directed by Sam Mendes, and, one summer, driving across America with Louis Theroux and his brother Marcel, one of Clegg’s best friends.

‘It was fantastic. We borrowed their dad’s Ford and drove all the way from Boston down the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to the South. Louis came to meet us in New Orleans and we went up through Arizona to California. We had a tent in the back of the car and would pitch it by the side of the road.’

Clegg was with Marcel in New York, during a ‘quite left-wing period’ working as an intern with Christopher Hitchens on the magazine The Nation, when he got into drag.

‘We met some deeply fashionable person who said come to a party, it’ll be fancy dress. We went off and bought outfits [of women] from The Simpsons, huge wigs, thinking it would be really outlandish.’ Big mistake. ‘We jumped into this party to find that, of course, the last thing fashionable people in New York are going to do is make a fool of themselves. All they did was put a little beauty spot on or something. We were these two English idiots. It was immensely embarrassing.’

Maybe then, but it’s funny now. Clegg laughs easily. It’s a useful point of difference, after all. Can you imagine David Cameron in a dress?