Who was Churchill’s favourite Spice Girl? Where did the Duke of Wellington have his first snog? Tell me, Dr Kissinger, are you a boxers man or briefs? Or did you broker an end to war in Indochina with something altogether scantier? The Cold War missile gap takes on a new dimension if we know you faced the Vietcong in only a thong.

The sense that public life has become one vast poptastic Smash Hits interview only grew firmer this weekend with the controversy over Gordon Brown’s reluctance to reveal his favourite biscuit. Pressed by questioners during an interview on Mumsnet, the Prime Minister consistently evaded answering the question. How long before we read that such prevarication shows that the Government is running on empty when it comes to policy on teatime treats. And its much-vaunted Elevenses Strategy is clearly in ruins.

I expect I’ll soon receive a press release from the Club/Penguin Alliance, speaking on behalf of chocolate shortcake sandwiches everywhere slamming the PM’s indecision. “For years now British biscuits have been neglected compared to our continental counterparts. Government can’t ignore our crumbling position much longer. A period of economic difficulty is precisely the wrong time to cut back on our delicious thick-chocolate treats that hit the spot just when you need a break. Lord Mandelson needs to ensure the investment is there around fourish every afternoon, and we as a nation have to recognise, now more than ever, that a drink’s too wet without one.”

In the end the Prime Minister let it be known, through the No 10 briefing machine, that he rejected both the old Left choice of massive Boost bars we can no longer afford and the new Right approach of cutting investment by opting for supermarket value packs that, as we all know, now have only 18 not 20 items, thus representing a 10 per cent cut in biscuit resources. Instead he would ensure we all had something nice and chocolatey, which proved Labour cared.

I’m sorry the Prime Minister did relent. I wish that he had replied to TweetiePie@Gmail.com’s question: “I didn’t give up an hour in my sleep-starved, highly-frazzled day, when I could have been co-ordinating our response to the global downturn or negotiating with Nato partners over Afghanistan to answer the sort of questions which would be cosmically inane if directed by an eight-year-old to Mika in a webchat sponsored by Heat, but when put by a grown adult to the Prime Minister of the fourth largest economy in the world make me weep hot tears of despair at our shrivelled media culture. My favourite biscuits are actually the beautifully made florentines you get at Patisserie Valerie in Marylebone, but since revealing that now opens me up to ridicule as a hopeless epicurean and all round metrosexual mincer out of touch with the reality of life in Glasgow I suspect I’d better have hemlock and belladona on toast with my next cup of tea to ensure I can escape the misery of this soul-wrenchingly dishonest exercise."

Taking the biscuit

I suppose, in fairness, I should allow that the whole question of sweet treats at teatime has influenced our politics before. During the battle over Lloyd George’s People’s Budget nearly 100 years ago, the aristocracy found it hard-going defending their privileges. But some of them gave it a jolly good go, demonstrating the sort of ingenuity that any connoisseur of political special pleading might admire. When the Duke of Buccleuch was being told that Lloyd George’s taxation measures would mean household economies he asked for the grim truth to be spelt out in detail. His estate manager explained that things under Liberal rule were so bad they would have to let the pastry chef go.

“Sack the pastry chef?” the duke expostulated, “What has the world come to? Can’t a man have a biscuit any more?”

Lloyd George won that round.

Look before you leap

It may be nine weeks until Christmas but with Billy “I’m harder than Scargill” Hayes and his mail workers union planning a campaign of disruption to Britain’s internal communications more comprehensive than anything the Spetsnaz conceived during the Cold War it’s never too soon to get posting.

Which is why its just as well that the perfect Christmas present is already on the shelves. I cannot think of any one I love or admire who would not enjoy receiving, and reading, Seasonal Suicide Notes by Roger Lewis, published by Short Books.

Its dark, savage, scabrous and enraged. A bilious hymn of hate against everything wrong with modern life, it is also the funniest, truest, most engaging thing I’ve read all year. Lewis is the drinking companion we all wish we had, and reading this book you get the delicious sense that it’s you and him against the world. And given the world we’re in, custard creams and all, against is the only place to be . . .

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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