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Lingfield, Surrey

Saturday, June 18, 1994; 17.00

Our Porsche turns not a single head outside the Lingfield Park Country Club.

‘You watch, he’ll sit there and lie through his teeth,’ says Fintan.

‘You can tell?’

‘Jesus, don’t they teach you anything at cop school? Two classic giveaways. If he glances low and left directly after the question, he’s about to lie. If he keeps starting sentences with things like “truthfully” and “honestly”, then he’s in the act of lying. Look and learn.’

I recognise George Field MP as soon as we walk into reception. Tweedy, rotund, red-faced and hairy-eared, he’s every inch the rugger-bugger buffoon who some- how defies evolution by earning the right to run the country.

Fintan introduces himself. Field wobbles to his feet, snorting like an addled rhino. He introduces us to Theresa Brunt, a Tory spin doctor dubbed ‘Total’ Brunt by Private Eye magazine and a ringer for one of those cross-dressing brutes who frequented Mother Clap’s in Victorian London.

We all sit and, like a magician flourishing a bunch of flowers, Fintan plucks a photo out of thin air and holds it beneath Field’s purple, pockmarked nose.

‘What is your relationship with this man?’ he asks.

Field’s nasal breathing grows so equine, it causes the photo clasped between Fintan’s thumb and forefinger to flap. He takes a quick glance low to his left and blusters: ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’