Kenneth Clarke made a triumphant-ish return to the dispatch box last week, getting rave reviews from political journalists (I’ve always thought the lobby doesn’t get out enough). I once did a television chat show with Ken. He chatted while I and others tried vainly to join in like a crocodile of schoolchildren attempting to cross the M6.

I remember we were due to discuss the decriminalisation of cannabis and chummily I asked Ken if he’d ever had a toke. “Ah, no,” he chortled, “I’m not rising to that. I don’t think politicians should answer that sort of question, ha ha.” Oh, for God’s sake, you’re on the board of a tobacco company, which is far worse.

And you know that your love of Europe is a more heinous crime in the eyes of your party than being caught dealing heroin outside Ludgrove. Anyway, you listen to jazz and nobody, but nobody, could possibly listen to Thelonious Monk. “Hee hee hee,” said Ken.

Have you noticed they always do that, politicians, get the giggles when they’re asked about dope? “Hee hee hee,” went Michael Howard last week, and then refused to answer.

I don’t suppose we need any more reasons to despise politicians for their preening, slimy self-interest, but their arrogant, smug refusal to tell their employers (you) things that are of direct relevance to legislation is astonishing, though not surprising.

They all make a show of probity when it comes to accepting a brass ashtray from the mayor of Stockton-on-Tees, but they’re shrill if you ask them if they’ve ever sucked a Camberwell Carrot.

When Ken and I got on air I grabbed a moment’s silence and said that it was because of his time as chancellor in Thatcher’s government championing small business that I as a school-leaver, barely literate, without qualifications, skill, trade or family business, had been able to set myself up as a self-employed entrepreneur.

“And what did you do?” beamed Ken. I was a drug dealer. I got on my bike and sold dope and speed and coke and pills out of people’s mothers’ cabinets. It’s the perfect Tory business. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was my motto. It was selling drugs that got me where I am today, so thanks.

There was a moment’s silence and Ken gave me a knowing look and then went: “Hee hee hee.”

• Jenny Tonge, Liberal Democrat MP for Gaza, says she can see herself as a suicide bomber. Having never given Tonge a moment’s thought, indeed having been wholly and severally unaware of her existence until the moment she mentioned detonation, I can for the first time take a good look and say yup, Jenny, I too can see you as a suicide bomber.

  Perhaps you’d like to go off at the next Lib Dem conference. Empathy is everything in modern caring politics. Tony feels our pain, Iain Duncan Smith feels Edward Heath’s pain, Clare Short feels the world’s pain. It’s not enough to want to help your fellow man, you’ve got to get inside his skin, or in Tonge’s case her hajib and dynamite corset.

  But then suicide bombing is in the finest tradition of the Liberal Democrat party; you explode in someone’s constituency, splitting the vote and taking the most popular candidate with you.

  And empathy is also at the heart of modern liberalism; go and ask any Lib Dem candidate: “What do you believe in so fundamentally that you’re willing to blow up for it?”, and they’ll look you selflessly in the eye and say: “What would you like me to explode over?”

  Limp praise for naked heroism

  Steve Gough, the naked rambler, has finally got his Groats. It’s taken him seven months to walk from Land’s End to the tip of Scotland, where last week in driving rain 25 wellwishers greeted him with applause. Shrivelled, I expect, but unbowed.

  He’d done it with only a silly green hat, a beard and a simple grin above the ankle. En route, he was arrested 15 times. Many things remind us that the law is an ass, but nothing quite so graphically as locking up a naked walker. Gough is a true English hero. While more and more dull, sad loners drag mattresses to the poles, fall off mountains or bob round the world in aerodynamic computers that cost more than a street of houses, Gough did a simple, profound, brave thing (would you walk to the postbox naked?). He did it without sponsorship, a petition, a back-up crew or, blissfully, any mention of charity.

  After his little achievement, the least the press could have done was print a full-frontal photograph, but I expect we’ll just have to wait for the calendar.

  Just what else have we got against Howard?

  The Jewish Chronicle has commissioned an opinion poll to find out what people would feel about having a Jewish prime minister (for you, we’ll throw in a home secretary and junior Treasury minister).

  Sorry, racial stereotyping there, but seeing as we’ve already had Disraeli more than 100 years ago isn’t this all a bit old yamulkah? Still, they got a story.

  Apparently, a terrifying 11% of the electorate would mind strongly. Put that the goy way, it’s 89% don’t mind very much at all, but still, any racism is a regrettable thing.

  I wonder, though, how many people would say they minded a Jewish prime minister of Israel, or a woman prime minister, and seeing as all of this is really about Michael Howard, what percentage do you think would have minded strongly about having a Welsh prime minister, or a Transylvanian, or a Tory, or a Jewish, Welsh, Transylvanian Tory who won’t tell us if he’s inhaled?

• So there are these lesbians, Sarah and Jamie. They spend £1,365 on sperm off the internet (6lb 8oz boy, mothers and baby doing well). And students thinking about the penury of their universities are shouting: “Why didn’t they say it was so valuable?” What’s odd is not that the ladies spent a holiday in Majorca, where there’s as much of it as you want for the taking, but bought it from a website (www.mannotincluded.com).

  Was it like the Chinese proverb, “Man who go to sleep with pressing problem wake up with solution on hand”? How do you put up with the jokes? I’ll leave the payoff line to the happy couple. They say they could have got it cheaper but paid for the premier service. Apparently, it gets delivered to the door.

  Jasper Gerard is away