Lady Garden

Quentin Letts, parliamentary sketch-writer for the Daily Mail, writes in the Diary column of the Spectator’s 26 November issue:

An embarrassed cough from the features desk of the Daily Mail as they ask: ‘This government whip in the Lords you mention in your column — are you sure about her name?’ The whip in question is Sue Garden, a Liberal Democrat. ‘What about her?’ I say. It is explained to me, gently, that ‘lady garden’ is a euphemism. My copy is duly altered to read ‘Baroness Garden of Frognall’. Poor love. To be both a Lib Dem and a synonym for pubes. That’s hard.

In that week’s Australian edition of the weekly – which is even better than the English one because you can read more about Australian politics and culture than you can in a month’s worth of any NZ newspaper –  Karl du Fresne asks “What’s John Key’s secret?” Smiling, apparently.