I wonder if the new drama about Mo Mowlam will feature the touching photo she had taken with me and my partner at the Labour conference in Brighton in 2000. She stood in between us and placed her right hand firmly on my right buttock and her left hand on John's left buttock. She then proceeded to give each of us a butt cheek massage while a photographer took the pictures.
Or maybe they will include the moment when she walked out of Politico's, paused in the doorway, burped and then farted.
I truly think her brain tumour had eaten away at that part of the brain which controls embarrassment threshholds.
In an interview with The Guardian her doctor actually spoke about how frontal lobe tumours effect inhibition, behaviour and judgement.
ReplyDeleteHilarious! First time I think I've laughed raucously at one of your posts Iain
ReplyDeleteFront lobe damage is famous for causing deficits in judgement and social inhibitory circuits. There's the famous case of Phineas Gage...
ReplyDeleteMind you, if she was affected the badly, why did she maintain that she was fit for office? :S
Does this have any bearing on why Gordon Brown sat on the government front bench during one of Tony Blair's PMQs picking his nose and eating the excavations?
ReplyDeleteGood Grief! You really would not want to reciprocate, would you?
ReplyDeleteAny decent human being would have accepted that the progressive impairment of mental functioning due to a brain tumour rules you out of high political office.
ReplyDeleteTo politicians however, in particular the narcissistic left, incompetence counts as nothing in comparison with the personal quest for power.
Another bog standard BBC leftist hagiography no doubt.
Sounds like my kind of lady.
ReplyDeleteI am open to the fact that Mo Mowlam's illness added to the loss of inhibition, although I think some of us would like to see the said photo, if only to see the looks on you and John's faces ;-)
ReplyDeleteDidn't she accuse Peter Mandleson of spreading vile rumours that her tumour was more serious than she was letting on and that at times she was acting in a rather strange way?
ReplyDeleteShe cited this as an example of his malicious spin.
It just goes to show that those who cry "wolf" all the time are occasionally right.
Ill never forget when you she say down with Ian Paisley, put her feet on the table, took off her whig, looked at Paisley and said hey babe, hows tricks?
ReplyDeletego figure
ReplyDeleteMy headmaster used to massage my buttocks, and it did me no harm.Look at me now.
ReplyDeleteEver had a bluebewwy massage?
I think we need a photo pst Mr Dale
ReplyDeletepost: not funny.
ReplyDeletenotasheep nose picking comment: hilaarious
I can only conclude that the former Mrs Moriarty should see a neurologist.
ReplyDeleteThis is doubtless all very amusing, but what worries me is that these latest 'revelations' from her 'doctor' seem to be giving a degree of credence to some of the smears that No 10 put out about Mo in the run-up to her departure from Cabinet in 2001, namely, that she had gone bonkers. In my view what this 'doctor' has done - even suggesting at one point that he would have gone to see Tony Blair to get her shifted into a less important job - is a quite atrocious breach of confidentiality.
ReplyDelete@Paul
ReplyDeleteYou believe that patient/doctor confidentiality still exists? How quaint. Have you ever been to the doctor recently? I went in to make an appointment this morning and the receptionist demanded to know what was wrong. I asked her if I should make an appointment with the doctor in order to see the receptionist.
That went down well.
Paul Linford said...
ReplyDelete"In my view what this 'doctor' has done ... is a quite atrocious breach of confidentiality."
I think you will find that the requirement for patient confidentiality doesn't extend beyond the grave.
Your story sounds horribly believable, Iain - she once did the same thing to my wee brother. (He took it in good part, but the photograph is a, um, picture.)
ReplyDeletePaul, the bond patient-confidence can only be relieved by the express permission of the patient, in life; or next of kin, after death. Mo Mowlam's doctor never betrayed her confidence during her lifetime - though he makes plain he exhorted her earnestly about the impact of her illness to do her job - and only spoke about these matters publicly after her death and with the express permission of her widowed husband.
A much more dubious case was that of Lord Moran, Churchill's personal physician, whose revelations in a volume of memoirs after the old man's death rightly infuriated Baroness Spencer-Churchill and the family. I believe Moran was professionally disciplined for his behaviour, though the GMC could not relieve him of the financial spoils.
I'm interested in whether the question of confidentially extends beyond the grave. I was quite shocked after Princess Di's death, the number of journalists who imparted her thoughts which she had given them confidentially.
ReplyDeleteDid she have big hands then? pmsl
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, how does Paul 'Linford' manage to combine being utterly boring with being utterly annoying?
Immunity to mortification is an asset to a politician, surely?
ReplyDelete