Duckers & Diving: A-Peerances Can Be Deceptive

THIS week our style-ravaged scribe gets the inside track on Birmingham’s newest peer of the realm.

Lord Whitby has been revealing the secrets of making it to the Westminster ermine.

It is alleged by others that the lad was deliberately made to wait – after all, he and David Cameron were supposedly less than bosom buddies.

He remains tight-lipped on the issue.

“Never believe in rumours,” declares our man, sinking a few with the troops in the Old Joint Stock.

I am talking about the spat over elected mayors – Big Mike despised the whole concept while Dave was all for it.

The voters had the final say and Dave lost.

But, while we are on rumours, according to the usual unreliable sources, our hero held out against a knighthood keen to do his bit in the Upper House.

Hence, when the political chatterers were contrasting his political impact with Sir Albert Bore, who was quickly recognised in his time, a call to the House of Lords was worth the delay.

But what will he be called?

Clearly it won’t be Lord Whitby of Whitby, there is plenty of money on Lord Whitby of Harborne (his Birmingham ward seat), Lord Whitby of Greater Birmingham might prove a touch pompous, and we have to consider the influence of devoted wife Gaynor.

How about Lord and Lady Whitby of Barbados, the pair’s holiday retreat? Or Lord Whitby of Brummagem?

Maybe even, in recognition of his inward investment efforts, Lord Whitby of (any old) China!

We won’t find out until mid-September – it takes that long to check out possibilities and make a recommendation to the Queen.

He has apparently had hundreds of congratulatory letters.

But he nearly never lived to succeed to the accolade.

In the mid 1970s, just as he had met Gaynor, the pair were travelling along the Malaysian coast.

It was night and dark as the ace of spades.

The scenario was sea, road and then forest. The occasional kampong, or village, on stilts in the water.

They were in an old fashioned Morris Minor and Communist guerrillas were still a concern. Indeed, on the crackly radio, they were warned of armed insurgents on their route. On no account should they risk stopping – gulp!

And suddenly there were lights ahead.

They had no means of defending themselves … though bizarrely they did have some carpet tacks with them. So, in true Baldrick fashion, Mike comes up with a cunning plan.

They will slow down arriving at the barrier and then ‘accelerate through’, throwing tacks behind them to thwart any pursuit, he declares.

Sounds very Dad’s Army to me.

Thankfully it never had to be put into practice for real – the lights turned out to be a checkpoint manned by the Malaysian Army. What a relief!