On last Sunday’s BBC politics show, presenter Laura Kuenssberg spoke to the energy secretary, Grant Shapps. On this occasion Shapps manifested as himself, rather than as one of the many false identities he used to inhabit when promoting his internet business. I always find Shapps’s appearances as himself uncomfortable, a bit like when Mike Yarwood used to say “and this is me!” at the end of his impressionist shows and then sing an old jazz standard in a weird American accent while squinting and waving his hands. Like Yarwood, Shapps himself seems more improbable than the people he pretended to be.
Because to me Shapps will always be Michael Green. Or Sebastian Fox. Or, proving Shapps a pioneer of now-commonplace gender fluidity, Corinne Stockheath, a name so blandly insane that, I will never tire of pointing out, no one else ever had it. Ever. Come on everyone! Sing it!! “One Corinne Stockheath! There’s only one Corinne Stockheath! One Corinne Stockheath! There’s only one Corinne Stockheath!”
