Ah, it's intoxicating: Kay Burley's book, First Ladies, is described in its own blurb, as "an irresistible cross between The Thick of It and Jilly Cooper". Damn right, such a cross would be irresistible. But cast your mind back to how Burley was described in the book of The Thick of It, AKA Armando Iannucci's DoSAC Files - "Being interviewed by Kay is, as we all know, like being interviewed by a backward child. That's obviously great most of the time. But occasionally she will throw you a curveball like a child might: 'Why is there war?' 'What is Europe?' – and if you can't answer it's you who ends up looking like the thick-as-pigshit chancer."
The Sky News presenter is so transparent she is mysterious. Did she really just ask that? Did she really just make Peter Andre cry? Did she really just ask the girlfriend of a serial killer whether if they'd had a better sex life he wouldn't have done it? Did she really mistake the Catholic ashes on Joe Biden's forehead for a bruise? Did Peter Mandelson really give her a three-line quote for the cover of her bonkbuster? ("Kay Burley uses her unparalleled knowledge of the worlds of politics, media and celebrity to racy effect.") What has she got on Mandy? And while we're here, what has she got on Lord Archer? ("Your words of wisdom were priceless," she says in the acknowledgments.) Has former political editor of the Sun George Pascoe-Watson no shame? ("Without his insight into the corridors of power, this book would not have been possible," she says.)
This is an interviewer whom even MPs will openly and on air call "a bit dim" (copyright Chris Bryant); a journalist who can apparently muster more complaints than she can viewers (a prize previously shared between Russell Brand and Chris Morris, but at least they were joking); she is not – how you say in television? – the fastest button on the remote control. And yet, here she is, with an airport read extraordinaire, and more testimonials than Sarah Brown's biography and the whole of Gordon Brown's prime ministership combined.
What can have entranced the world so? This is the story. There's a prime minister, right? He's called Julian. He has a silver tongue which he puts to use in arenas beyond persuasion. It's just about the worst metaphor ever, since if you absolutely have to talk about cunnilingus (and do we? Do we really?), silver has to be the very last element you'd choose. No. Maybe a lead tongue would be worse. Anyway, orbiting Julian is his wife, Vanessa, who I think is not intended to resemble either Cherie, Sarah or Sam, being "trim, tall, well-educated but deeply unhappy" – the last trait manifesting itself in prodigious drinking (no politicians drink these days, not really. Nobody except Liberals). Then there's Sally Simpson, "the powerful editor of the best-selling magazine Celeb, she can't wait to take her rightful place by Julian's side as his new wife and glamorous chatelaine of Number 10". I guess she's supposed to be a sort of Rebecca Wade character, though it's hard to tell until I can work out what her hair is like. I can tell you what her thighs are like, and also her toes (well kept, on all 12 counts). Then there is Isla – ah, Isla! You are true woman. You are a sexy TV reporter, who will do anything (or anyone!) to get to the top. You have a much better body than Sally, and you are not a dypso like Vanessa. What man in his right mind would pass you up for the others? What cruel world wouldn't see in a heartbeat that you were the woman for the job of chatelaine?
I think maybe Isla is meant to be Kay. It's like Bridget Jones in reverse: instead of a catalogue of ineptitude and mishappenstance that leaves you thinking "it can't have been that bad", it is a catalogue of triumph and sexual wizardry that leaves you thinking "it can't have been that good".
Incidentally, the acknowledgments also thank Bertie Ahern, the former Taoiseach, "for his guidance on Irish politics". I know, it's a baffler. There was no reference to Irish politics that Wikipedia couldn't have guided a person through.
Nope, I have thought it through: there is no such thing as namedropping in a book like this. It's actually product placement. La Senza paid big, and are rewarded with a walk-on in almost every sex scene, despite the fact that if you were just about to shag the prime minister, you would almost certainly loosen the purse strings a bit (is Agent Provocateur too much to ask, ladies? I mean, I know I'm not Barack Obama, but I deserve more than a polyester teddy. This would be my line of attack, if I were lucky enough to be Tony Blair, I mean, Julian Jenson). Bang & Olufsen went medium-sized (they don't really need the publicity). Bertie Ahern must have paid for his appearance, no doubt about it. What was in it for him remains unclear.
Typically, when a book comes out that is full of sex scenes, and none of them is written by Henry Miller, they are all exquisitely embarrassing. The temptation to quote them is too much. Like this one, for instance . . . this is Isla and Julian's first congress. She has just nodded her eager acceptance to his inquiring glance. If it sounds like something you might do when you're at a restaurant – the waiter has just come over and you want more fizzy water – bear in mind that she has first taken the precaution of removing her clothes: "He instantly turned and swept away every bit of clutter from his leather-topped desk, knocking over a Waterford Crystal water jug in his urgency, which smashed into tiny shards as it crashed to the ground." (No thick carpet! Where is Omar Sharif in this sexual fantasy?) "The sound made Isla jump but Julian had already spun back around and was lifting her from her feet. She eagerly wrapped her long legs expectantly around him." (You know, it's actually the sweeping-things-off-the-desk cliche that is more cringe-worthy than any possible image of activity between Prime Minister and Sexy Reporter. Come on! Who, shagging upon a desk, first needs to clear the desk?)
Unusually, though, the political shenanigans are even more embarrassing than either the sex or the cliches that vertically infect each act like cross-generational syphilis. Seriously, the politics is terrible. The politics make you want to hide your eyes. This is Julian Jensen having a meeting about Afghanistan: "Looking around at the roll call of familiar faces seated at the table, Julian was reminded that the situation was dire. The heads of MI5 and MI6 were there, as were the defence secretary and the foreign secretary . . ." Well, like, you're having a meeting about a war. So obviously your key staff members are going to be there. I actually quite like this image, the more I think about it. Tony Blair, looking round a room, thinking, "Fuck, John Scarlett's here! I really must be in the middle of a proper war!"
In the main, there isn't anything here for which an insider knowledge of British politics could ever be required. The grumpy aide is just like Malcolm Tucker, except without humour or insight or swearing. In other words, he barely exists, he's not a person, he's some necessary landscape to a political bonkbuster, like a cloud, or the beep on a traffic light. The boozing wife never seems particularly drunk, but writing drunk is, apparently, like acting drunk, you have to be drunk to do it and then you can't, because you're drunk.
There is passion in it, but it is mainly for business-class flying: journalists are obsessed with flying business class. Nobody ever lets them, so it's the one deafening signifier that they're not engaged in a proper business. And yet they can't complain because it sounds so unprofessional (would a war correspondent fly business class? Would John Simpson ask for his Virgin manicure?). Her hero, of course, has his own private jet. That's practically a wet dream right there, before he's even loosened his Hermès tie and effortlessly lifted you from the bed and on to his broad shoulders (many of the sex scenes require a kind of Cirque de Soleil agility that I, for one, would be surprised to find that high up the political ladder).
I'm trying to think of someone for whom this would constitute the ideal beach read: someone who loved sex scenes, but only among middle-aged people in or near Westminster; someone who loved politics, so long as it involved no actual politics; someone who was crazy for famous people, but didn't want to know any of their names; someone who was fascinated by rolling news on the television, even though it's obvious how it's put together.
And yet, there they are, the heavy mob of parliament and beyond, lining up with their sage advice and bolstering words. "Once I picked up this book, it wouldn't put me down again," said Kathy Lette. "Juiciest read of the year," said Tasmina Perry.
She has some dark power, Kay Burley. But God knows what it is. And you won't find out from First Ladies.
• First Ladies by Kay Burley is published by Harper on 12 May, priced £7.99
Perfect for panto lovers
Review by Chris Bryant
To be fair, I'm sure Kay Burley didn't intend me to read this mishmash of rumpy-pumpy high-life chicklit improbably set within the Westminster bubble. So she would probably laugh off complaints that it doesn't take women or politics very seriously. But there are amusing twists, countless glamorous locations and certainly plenty of sex.
Those who love panto have plenty to enjoy, too. Spin doctors are "machiavellian", the philandering prime minister is "handsome" and "muscular", his pill-popping, gin‑slugging wife watches Jeremy Kyle all day, his graspingly ambitious mistress-cum-editor "writhes with pleasure", and, needless to say, the rather dim but steely TV presenter always wears a dress that clings "seductively to her nubile curves".
At one point, the PM's "uber spin doctor" suggests the defence secretary should announce her son intends to join the armed forces, even though he wants to be a surgeon, just to get over a media hitch in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what Damian McBride and Peter Mandelson, whom Burley thanks for their help with the book, thought of that, but it didn't ring true to me.
The book is brimful of chutzpah – there can't be many novelists who would give us the implausible moment of an "escort girl posing provocatively for photographs on the ledge of [the home secretary's] duck house". But the problem is there is not a single moment in the 424 pages where I could care less about any of the characters. All in all: Mills & Boon meets Ann Widdecombe with, in the words of Kind Hearts and Coronets, plenty of "concomitant crudities".
Chris Bryant is Labour MP for Rhondda
