ANN WIDDECOMBE:
“How dare you ask me that question!?”. No-nonsense MP Ann Widdecombe cuts short an interview with eyebrow magazine, as we pose a personal one… Did we tickle a nerve?
Cripes this interview was hilarious. And not because we planned it that way. Widdy said yes to our interview request and we had some pretty bog-standard questions planned. We turned up to Parliament and we were greeted by an intern from Widdy’s office who told us that Widdy had been working her ‘to the bone’. Poor sod looked absolutely terrified. Anyway we walked in to Widdy’s office and she was monstrously rude to me, refusing to look me in the eye, or even lift her head when she shook my hand. On the other hand, she was very polite and friendly to my (male) colleague.
Either she felt threatened by the presence of another female, or she just doesn’t like women. Or she does like women.
Anyway, the interview got going and I was getting fidgety to get some interesting answers from the interview. We had planned to ask her about her time as an agony aunt for the Guardian. We asked her some hypothetical questions which she responded to, just about; she was getting angsty by the direct nature of the questioning. I then asked her a question that she took really personally and the interview was abruptly stopped to the words of:
‘Right. End of interview. That’s disgusting, how dare you ask me that sort of question. I’m a Catholic, you know.’
Which was hi-larious! (the Catholic bit). If she had had any sort of humour she would have responded with a quick answer and that would have been the end of it. Instead, the whole thing got written up by Matthew Bell, from the Independent on Sunday plus there was a load of amusing mash-ups of the interview on the web. I saw her a week later when we were filming outside parliament for something else. I had to hide between two parked cars.
