Rachel Johnson ‘Yous!’ a train cleaner in rubber gloves says as we arrive at Liverpool Lime Street. ‘What are yous doing here?’ He is grinning and holding up the political journalists and delegates dribbling from the Euston train like a leaky hose. Behind me waits Tim Shipman, the consummate chronicler of Conservative political chaos. I once sent Shippers a photograph of me sitting between my brothers Boris and Jo in a row on a cream chintz sofa at Chevening, all holding his hardback Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. It was 2017. Instead of exchanging books which we had written – as is the family Christmas custom – everyone had given each other his. Those were the days to be a hack, eh. Or a politician. Drama! Box office! Action! This year it’s Labour’s first party conference in power and instead of Tory chaos there will be grim sacrifice and struggle ahead. Ours. More Unser Kampf than Mein. In answer to the cleaner’s existential question, one I have so often been asked in many and varied settings, I confess: ‘Labour party conference…’ He pulls up a sleeve to reveal an elaborate special forces tattoo spreading blue on his bicep. ‘I was in the SAS too,’ he announces, as if we are brothers in arms. On the way to the docks in the drizzle I explain to a faintly puzzled Shippers (his new book, by the way, is about the exits of the last four PMs and is just titled Out) that I’m appearing on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins on Channel 4. Then the conversation turns to the big topic – the buffet of evening options. There’s the rally for Labour feminists, the rally for the Labour Movement for Europe, the Statesman party in the museum, the Tony Blair thing… Tim has ‘a corporate’ and I have to decide whether to go to the Spectator party or back to my hotel to watch myself on television, although I do not say this out loud. My principle of doing reality TV shows is that you should never watch them before you attach your name (if you did, you’d never sign up) and never watch them afterwards either – it’s too awful. Plus the Spectator party is Pol Roger at the Pullman. The correctness of my decision is confirmed by those watching Celebrity SAS so I don’t have to. All you are allowed to take into camp is pants and bra. There is no hair and make-up. We are being ‘trained’ for ‘winter warfare’ in the New Zealand Alps and it is so cold the water has frozen so nobody washes apart from the daily waterboarding in freezing lakes (I might add that glamour is also in very short supply in Liverpool, even though Rachel Reeves’s barnet is super glossy and Emily Maitlis is in strappy gold stilettos at the Spectator party). I check my phone as I walk back to my hotel. Episode one ends with all the recruits having to storm a house where a hostage is being held as bombs go off, save him and shoot his captors. ‘Totally hooked and desperate for you to make it!’ texts former health secretary and last season Celebrity SAS veteran Matt Hancock. The critic Camilla Long warns me as a friend that I look like the Wreck of the Deutschland throughout. My father is even more loyal. ‘I loved it when you shot the hostage!’ he writes. The actual truth of the matter is I’m here to make contacts as my LBC show has moved to a weekday – Friday at 7 p.m. – and grab wimmin for my Global podcast, Difficult Women. In that, at least, it is mission accomplished. However, my secret theory about the huge success of ‘audio’ is this. Most people use podcasts and audiobooks as sleep aids. If in need of a power nap during the day, I play Ukraine: The Latest, the peerless daily podcast on Putin’s war, and I’m often spark out before the thrumming instrumental intro segues into Storm Shadows. The Rest Is History is my alternate choice. The bridge writer and player Susanna Gross told me that she was recently discussing this very device with the novelist Ian McEwan. ‘We both listen to audiobooks to help us sleep – we swapped suggestions,’ she told me. ‘He was listening to Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy and I recommended Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors At The Playboy Mansion.’ I wanted to end by saying something about the scrumptious forthcoming telly series Rivals but I had to sign an NDA (sigh) at the screening, so can’t. Dame Jilly Cooper and Disney can’t mind me revealing that my viewing pleasure was unconfined, and although you see ‘willies’ as warned, Dame Jilly’s works are not so much about sex or power but money, class and taste. Shiveringly brilliant. Rachel Johnson presents her LBC show on Fridays at 7 p.m. the spectator | 28 september 2024 | www.spectator.co.uk 9