With all the other stuff in the papers yesterday, it won’t be surprising if Nick Clegg’s appearance in the Sunday Times magazine passed you by. He faced questions from a panel of 36 celebrities who put their hearts and souls into thinking all sorts of original questions for him.

First up was Jeremy Clarkson, characteristically pithy, asking whether Nick felt sorry for Chris Huhne. “After all,” the Top Gear presenter said, “he was only speeding.”

Nick’s played that with a compassionate but clear bat:

I do feel sorry for the whole family because they have all clearly become engulfed in something that has spun right out of control. It’s not the speeding that is the issue here, it’s the subsequent offence of perverting the course of justice — and Chris has pleaded guilty.

Marcus Brigstocke asked him to make 3 wishes, personal, political and free choice -and added that if he answered correctly he could win a peerage.

On the political front, that’s easy — a Liberal Democrat government. On a personal front, my wish would be to get more sleep. The third would be to have more time to practise my tennis. But you can forget the peerage — I certainly wouldn’t want one, at least not in today’s unreformed House of Lords.

It seems he wants to beat David Cameron on the tennis court just as much as in the electoral battleground of Eastleigh. Somebody has to set up a charity match between the two…

Speaking of Cameron, Susan Penhaligon asked him what the Prime Minister’s best and worst traits were:

He’s got a very good sense of humour. But he is a Conservative.

My personal favourite was Nigel Planer who quizzed him on his acting style:

If you’d have carried on with the acting, what role do you think you’d have been ideally suited to play, and why? Do you see yourself as having been more of a Benedict Cumberbatch or a Martin Freeman — that is, a Holmes or a Watson?

I’ll let others be the judge of that. I don’t think the West End has lost much by my move into politics. Having said that, I’d love to have had a walk-on part when Nigel was in The Young Ones. I was part of that generation that loved the show.

There are 32 other questions on subjects such as his favourite books, to his kids’ education to intellectual property to his favourite historical PM. Nick even throws in a gratuitous Lembit mention of Lembit Opik. You can read the whole thing  behind the paywall here.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social