Politics is, apparently, showbusiness for ugly people. Well. I should know. My one foray into showbiz, a role as the school chaplain in the big-screen family comedy A Feast at Midnight, resulted in my lovingly delivered lines being left on the cutting-room floor and untroubled slumber for my agent for months thereafter. Even though the film was a success (its director, Justin Hardy, is now one of Channel 4’s most prestigious award winners), I’m afraid it didn’t propel me on to the Hollywood Alist. Or even the Shepherd’s Bush Z-list. I was so wooden I couldn’t even have made it as an extra in Eldorado.

And so I now find myself in a very different line of work. Whether or not it’s a more appropriate use of whatever passes for talent in my make-up, I’ll leave to others. But in one respect I am perfect for politics. I inhabit that territory where plain no longer quite does it, where an outsize nose, pendulous ears and a wonky hairline combine with other skewwiff features to make for, well, ugly.

I’m not trying to engage in false modesty, nor am I angling for compliments. I know that I don’t have the sort of breathtaking ugliness that causes children to cry and dogs to yank their owners across the street. But, in a world where regular features carry you a long way and all manner of subtle enhancement techniques are raising the bar, I know I am below what now passes for average-looking. And that’s even before I smile, and you can see my teeth.

Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily mention the subject of my rather drearily sub-standard physiognomy if it weren’t for the fact that another newspaper recently ran a prominent piece by an attractive woman (who is also, I happen to know, very intelligent) about the trials of being beautiful, and the prejudices the outstandingly good-looking face in our society (assumptions about bimbosity, unwanted propositions, general all round jealousy and spite). I want to be sympathetic, honestly I do. And I’m sure it is rather a strain being gorgeous, and the knowledge that one day it will all go saggy and droopy must lend an extra twist of melancholy to every cocktail moment. But however trying it must be, being hot, let me tell you that there are plenty of compensations. You can wear what you like, because your natural attractiveness needs no enhancement; you can get away with dippiness and silliness because your puppyish looks disarm criticism; and you can enjoy a life of sexual dilettantism without guilt because all you’re really doing is granting everyone you favour their secret wish.

For those of us, however, who are destined to go through life with a face like a badly peeled potato, existence is slightly different. What the beautiful don’t appreciate is just how we ugly folk have to try harder to pass muster. We have to be that bit smarter, that bit more careful about hairs and other stuff out of place, that bit less assertive, because we’re not going to be given the same benefit of the doubt. And while there is always something breathtaking about the truly beautiful that inspires curiosity, it’s my conviction that there is something much more compelling about the lives of not-quite-desperation led by those of us who’re a bit slipshod, unfinished or lopsided face-wise.

In history and politics it is always the uglier one in any rivalry whose story is more interesting, if not necessarily sympathetic. Nixon and LBJ are compelling in a way that the pretty-boy Kennedys could never be. Robin Cook and, for that matter, John Prescott, make for much more rewarding character studies, I suspect, than the matineeish Paddy Ashdown or David Owen.

Even in showbiz, or the arts more generally, a Michael Gambon has a weary magnificence that eclipses altogether the shored-up prettiness of a Terence Stamp and a wizened Auden is worth ten self-regarding Ted Hughes.

Ugly folk, or at the very least those of us encumbered with a rather hangdog plainness, generally have to work a bit harder, listen more closely to others at parties, because we can’t afford to seem dreamily uninterested, and try to pack more into each sentence when we meet new people, because we can’t rely on their attention being fixed, in a pleasantly vacant way, on our features. Thus we can be relied on to more than pull our weight at any social gathering. Of course many of us try just too hard, thus adding an air of overattentive, hyper-talkative earnest weirdness to our unfortunate appearance and we end up giving off a vibe similar to Herr Lipp’s in The League of Gentlemen.

Those of us who are plain, however, do tend to be loyal (if only because there are fewer people interested in us in the first place and therefore simply less likelihood, statistically, that we’ll be straying into another’s camp) and our presence can be reassuring, in the same way that newspaper foreign pages can be, as proof that your own life could be a lot worse.

And, of course, being ugly is simply much more expensive than being beautiful. Because we uglier types can, without due care and attention, descend into the realms of the quite godawful, we have to invest in making the best of what we’ve got. Thus you have the paradox, which I exemplify, of the individual who is both plain and vain, a man who tries to dress smartly because of an anxiety to minimise the unhappy aesthetic impact of one’s appearance. And since the one thing that we know makes men relatively presentable is adherence to tried and tested dress codes, that’s why I dress excessively soberly – it minimises the risk of my appearance jarring. So, whether or not politics is showbiz for ugly people, those of us who are less than gorgeous can definitely benefit from staying conservative . . .

And they call it puppy love. . .

Many thanks to all those who wrote in sympathising with me after my wife’s successful outwitting of my defences and her insertion of a pet dog into our home, behind what I had believed were invulnerable lines. I have to say that the affair of Mars the Dog has proved not only that Mrs G is a brilliant strategist, capable of bending me to her will with the minimum of effort, she is also a shrewder reader of psychology than any professional I’ve ever come across.

For Mars, the Jack Russell puppy, is simply the best soother of nerves I’ve ever come across, his presence on one’s lap brings a sense of serenity and companionship that acts as a tonic on work-jangled nerves.

His cry of delight (enhanced, I suspect, by my liberal approach to puppy treats) when I cross the threshold adds another level to the sense of welcome that coming home can bring. And the delighted curiosity he inspires in others, who long to ask his name, age and breed, makes every encounter when you’re walking him a pleasant one.

Yes, he’s expensive, smelly, dangerously leaky and always on the scrounge. But then that describes many of my dearest friends, and Mars is now firmly of their number.

Cosy rockers

I was very heartened to read that Rod Stewart’s pride and joy is his model railway. And almost as delighted to see that Keith Richards had taken part in a demonstration to save his local accident and emergency unit in the Home Counties. Nothing delights me so much as seeing those who’ve made millions out of staging a permanent display of teenage desire and adolescent rebellion settle into suburban grand-daddery. I can’t wait for Pete Doherty’s bridge column to start or Amy Winehouse to write a cookery book with Clarissa Dickson Wright. If Rod and Keef can descend into cosy slipperdom then no one is immune.

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