From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: Derek Draper’s Weirdo Gambit
Great to be back. Things genuinely do actually seem to be feeling like they are almost looking up. Your weekend "not-a-relaunch" is getting good traction. This one especially doesn't have the flavour of a relaunch.
Saw that the celebrity astrologist and aromatherapist Derek Draper has been in the papers giving us some helpful positioning advice - ie, pushing your kids to go on Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes and encouraging Sarah to do an FHM cover. The great thing about Derek is how he has managed to escape the torrid world of political one-upmanship and star-fucking by marrying a TV presenter and appearing constantly on television and in the national press. Think it really shows a healthy path to a post-political future to those of us here in The Unit who wonder exactly what we'll do in two years when (and still possibly if) everything comes crashing down around us.
But think a seasoned campaigner like Derek is well worth listening to on this stuff. His pitch, in essence, was that we should go public about what a weirdo you are and maybe the British public might like this. Interesting.
One way of "doing a Draper" and revealing a bit more of the "real you" might be to release a version of the gifts you received at Christmas? Tweaked, obviously. What we want to play up is a sense of you as agreeably odd. Incredibly brainy, but with a zany pop-cultural side. An über-trustworthy policy wonk, yes, but a k-krazy Willy Wonka type - one who might look up from his copy of Himmelfarb's Moral Imagination if the children have a talent show on at sufficient volume. Indeed, a man who might even watch The X Factor, and not in the way an entomologist might watch the bafflingly futile life cycle of the mayfly, but like someone who was engaging with the people on the show almost as if they were real people.
So we might say you got the following for Christmas (with a suggested line to take on further questioning):
1. Reinhold Niebuhr - The Nature and Destiny of Man, which you don't already have (sure!).
2. An Xbox, which you love, particularly the games for it, which you play.
3. Statistical abstract of the 2001 UK census, which is a laugh, and interesting.
4. Official Lucy Pinder Calendar 2008 - you like her, she's sexy, she's a woman.
5. A beanie hat, which you sometimes wear in private, or to gigs (this may be too much).
6. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents in Marxism (Volume III) - it's the best volume, it covers Gramsci. Compared to it, the other volumes are shit.
7. A Peter Kay DVD, which you've already seen, but like: it's funny, especially the jokes.
8. Alastair Campbell's Diaries, which you enjoyed; they didn't enrage you, they were interesting.
Think this might be the right sort of level. Let us know your thoughts.
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