Prime minister drops Winner putdown and plumps for 'fair-dairy land' reference from Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West)
There was Angela Eagle sitting on the Labour frontbench, as if waiting for another mildly condescending remark from David Cameron – "let it lie, pet, why don't you?" perhaps. But the prime minister used a pop culture reference even older than the one he used a week ago, when he quoted Michael Winner's "calm down, dear." He was replying to Kelvin Hopkins, a Luton Labour MP who had quoted predictions that half a million more people are going to lose their jobs in the public sector, and another half million in the private sector.
Did the prime minister not realise that this would bring a collapse in the housing market, which in turn would lead to a collapse in the Tory vote, and the return of a Labour government? Would he now care to say goodbye to many of his colleagues?
Mr Cameron said he had thought Mr Hopkins came from Luton. "But it sounds like he is from some fairy-dairy land!" Fairy-dairy land? What was he on about? But as I puzzled, a colleague reminded me that this was a quotation from Benny Hill's great song, Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West).
Those who remember it will recall that Ernie had a rival for the hand of Sue, a baker called Two-Ton Ted from Teddington. At the end he and Ernie have a wild west-style shootout, and Ernie is fatally felled by a stale pork pie. He goes to the milkman's Valhalla, or "fairy-dairy land", from which he haunts Two-Ton Ted and Sue as they lie in the marital bed.
What's extraordinary is the fact that Cameron chose Ernie as one of his Desert Island Discs, even though he was five years old when it was first a hit. He claims that it is his party piece, being the only song he knows by heart.
Maybe it would help calm down cabinet meetings, now that these appear to be raucous and vituperative scraps between the Tories and the Lib Dems.
Chris Huhne: "You, prime minister, are a blaggard and a liar. You are scarcely better than your chancellor, who is a thief and a poltroon!"
Cameron (singing): "She nearly swooned at his macaroon, and said: 'If you treat me right, you'll have hot rolls every morning – and crumpets every night'."
Huhne, "Oh well, since you put it that way ..."
All this deflected from one of the least enlightening prime minister's questions for quite a while. The chamber was less than full as MPs had decamped to help in the local elections and the AV referendum.
Tories were put up, one after the other, like the "whack-a-mole" game in an amusement arcade. The gist of what they all said was that, while Tory councils were absorbing the cuts and so making huge savings without having to harm any services, nearby Labour councils were carting the elderly and infirm out from their care homes in wheelbarrows and dumping them in the gutter. I exaggerate, but not much.
It could have been worse. Margaret Thatcher's favourite song was Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys, to which the only possible response is: "Aaaargh!"