The long-suffering Sarah Vine has been revealing the innermost indulgences and divulgences of her husband, Michael Gove in her new Daily Mail column. Don’t have the time or inclination to trawl the annals of the online right wing media? I’ve gathered the most succulent offerings for you below.
- He loves Doritos, Coca Cola, Dairylea Dunkers and luxury coleslaw, and will order them all on Ocado if left unattended. No wonder Jamie Oliver had (hand-reared organic) beef with him.
- He’s learning the ukulele in order to take his mind off the high pressures of a cabinet job, because he loves Mumford & Sons like only the chronically boring can.
- He may or may not own a pinstriped onesie. At least, that’s the appropriate attire – inspired by Winston Churchill – that wife Sarah Vine considers appropriate for straight men over the age of 40.
- There are as many pictures of Margaret Thatcher in his office as there are of his wife and children. No comment needed.
- He finds Angela Merkel ‘as hot as Jennifer Lopez’.
- He loves Wagner so much that he came back from holiday with a pair of lederhosen-style swimming trunks. No, I’m not sure where the connection is either. But what’s important is the mental image.
- It took him seven attempts to pass his driving test. Too many unexpected U-turns.
- While his wife gave birth in the same room, he read a biography of Lyndon B Johnson (over 1,000 pages in 23 hours), proving that his commitment to erasing ‘vapid happy talk’ in favour of memorising facts is faithfully translated into his personal life. He complained once, asking whether he could have ‘a real chair’ instead of a beanbag, drawing happy parallels with his attempts to replace Media Studies with ‘real subjects’.
- He once obsessed about ‘dropping two dress sizes in six weeks’. This is separate to the time he was on the Atkins diet.
- He sings along to The Smiths in the car with his six year old son. ‘What’ll it be today, Billy? Girlfriend in a Coma or Bigmouth Strikes Again?’
The over-share has become so severe a problem that even the Daily Mail has been horrified in the past (‘Oh Minister, what toe-curling secrets will your wife reveal about you next?’ asked one scandalised DM journalist.) That was before they even hired her to continue the tirade of uncomfortable truths – and in doing so, created a monster. A monster no doubt fed with a large amount of financial encouragement.