BELLA BARTOCK went “Up West” last night, for the opening night of a new stage comedy from a Croydon writer who has managed to harness some of the excitement, and a few of the skills, of the Rugby World Cup
We’re in a ruck, we’ve got to get out of it… political hooker Steven Gauge
Finally, more than five years on, the real reason behind Nick Clegg’s broken pledge on student fees has been revealed.
On the day when Lord Cashcroft gave a whole new meaning to the expression “pork barrel politics”, an insider from the Liberal Democrat side of the David Cameron-led Coalition Government was spilling his guts on the West End stage about how Clegg came to make an offer he just could not fulfill.
According to a new play being performed in the West End this week, it was all because Clegg’s election campaign manager was hung-over, and maybe still just a little bit drunk, after a weekend of debauchery “on tour” on the south coast with the third worst rugby team in Surrey.
In 2010, Steven Gauge, a sometime LibDem candidate in various elections in this part of south London, was living a double life. By (week)day, the manager of the LibDem politicial campaign which somehow captured the imagination of millions of people across the country; while at the weekends, he was captaining the Warlingham RFC 4th XV.
Juggling the two onerous responsibilities would prove a stretch too far in April 2010, when the rugby team set off for its end-of-season tour to Sussex. The phrase “Bugger Bognor” would come back to haunt Clegg, as Gauge re-tells the episode in his new play, My Life As A Hooker, which had its opening night in front of a packed and chortling house at the Museum of Comedy in Bloomsbury last night. Continue reading →
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