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Revision as of 07:50, 25 October 2011
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Thursday the 13th of October saw a packed house at Ilkley's Kings Hall to hear Chris Mullin talk about the last (but, confusingly, the first, chronologically speaking) of the three volume of his diaries to be published. ''A Walk-On Part'' covers the period from May 1994 – the day after the death of Labour leader John Smith - to 1999 when Mullin became a minister in the Labour government. It's the time of the birth and growth of New Labour.
Was it going to be a dry evening of political anecdotes? Mullin soon put out minds at rest on that score. He'd wondered about what he would do when he left Parliament after twenty three years as an MP, but the matter seemed to have been settled – he's become a light entertainer. He spoke briefly too about his stint as a Booker Prize judge and the fact that it was generally thought that [[Man Booker Prize 2011|this year's short-list ]] was rather controversial. He and his fellow judges had an advantage over most people though – they'd actually read the books.
Mullin spoke for forty minutes – with no one to share the burden or feed him questions and no props but our imaginations. If you've read the diaries a lot of the occasions about which he spoke would not be new, but he has the timing of a brilliant comedian and the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Lord Mandelson, Tony Banks and a host of the great and the good were there on stage. There was a delightful mix of his political and his personal life. The time flew by with murmurs of agreement and rounds of applause from the audience.
