Government, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair, is a bit like learning to unicycle.. No, really! The admission came during a Question and Answer session with party delegates in Brighton.. chaired by Eddie Izzard.. whose presence may, or may not, have had something to do with the somewhat surreal flights of fancy between more scripted serious questions.From the transcript –
Eddie Izzard[EI]: Okay. Thank you very much to the ladies and gentlemen of the media. We’ll just wait a brief second here while everyone goes. And we should probably juggle at this point or do some strange song and dance routine.
Tony Blair[TB]: Errr…
EI: But I’m not going to do that. It’s a hypothetical.
TB: Can you juggle?
EI: I can actually juggle. Very badly. I can unicycle better than I can juggle, but it’s never been…
TB: Yeah, my unicycle is not absolutely…
[Laughs]
TB: It’s not great but…
EI: Here’s a tip: if you want to learn the unicycle you start on the big ones because the small ones are harder because it’s the pendulum swing – the small ones have a very fast pendulum swing, the bigger ones have a slower, easier to learn on.
TB: Bit like government really isn’t it!
Eddie Izzard also took the opportunity to promote his idea of an elected monarchy –
TB: I was just doing something with Billy Bragg next door actually who’s got a very interesting idea of House of Lords reform, but as I always say to Billy, I mean if I could understand it I might do it but I mean it gets very…
EI: Well I’ve got an idea of an elected monarchy. That was my idea. But… I put it to Prince Charles and he went ‘argh..’
TB: [Laughs]
EI: But I think everyone would like that except, and it would get the monarchy into shape. You know take the top 50 blue bloods and then they’ve got to all go and put themselves to be head of state and then you know, we’d say let’s go and put Harry, let’s go put William, let’s go out one of the other ones, and elected monarchy could be the future of, through the third millennium…
TB: I’m not saying anything! I’m going to just let you talk!
[Laughs]
EI: I just thought, it was an idea!
TB: There are some subjects that are big, you know…
EI: You don‘t need to go there! I’m just going to keep repeating it in places.
TB: Don’t go there!
EI: Okay. Erm, well we’ll move on.
I wonder if Eddie would be available for some of our local parties’ conferences…