YOU can lampoon him and mock him but you won’t upset Kenneth Baker.
M’Lord Baker, in fact, is so addicted to cartoons that he has a fine collection of more than 3,000 at his home, including works by the great 18th-century satirist Gilray.
“I keep them in drawers, many of them are in watercolours and would of course fade in the light,” he told me on Monday evening.
“In our London flat my wife allows me one wall which is covered from top to bottom, and in our country house we have cartoons in our guest bedrooms.”
I was talking to him at the launch of Martin Rowson’s wonderful collection of caricatures called Mugshots (See The Review) at the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho.
Lord Baker, former Tory Home Secretary – like many politicians – believes you have not arrived until you appear in a cartoon in the public prints.
Once he was depicted as a slimy slug in TV’s Spitting Image but – as he put it to me – “so bloody what”.
A more lofty view was, apparently, held by Margaret Thatcher, he confided.
She hardly ever saw a cartoon of herself – or showed any interest in the art.
“She read the front pages of the Times, Telegraph and Financial Times – and all the other articles deemed important were cut out for her by her advisors,” said M’Lord.

‘We’re architectural Mods’

EYEBROWS shot up when an oblong glass house rose up in sedate Downshire Hill, Hampstead in the 1970s.
Now, the avant-garde architect Lady Patricia Hopkins is planning an extension to the controversial modernist eruption in one of Hampstead’s prestigious streets.
But members of the Heath and Hampstead Society took the news calmly at their annual meeting last week. Times are different today was Lady Hopkins’ message to members.
“I suppose we’re the architectural equivalent of mods rather than rockers” she said as the guest speaker.
Lady Hopkins, who lives in the ‘glass house’, said that she had not yet applied for planning permission.
However, objections from the Society are unlikely.
“We are by no means traditionalist,” said chairman Tony Hillier. “One of the beauties of Hampstead is the variety of architecture.”

• Elected officers of the Society included: President Lord Hoffman, secretary, Janine Griffiths and John Smithard, treasurer.
Pictured here from left: Lord Hoffman, Lady Hopkins and Tony Hillier

Nothing new under the sun in grimy politics

I TAKE off my hat to those who pulled off such an extraordinary coup in Somers Town recently when Labour Party members busied themselves in selecting candidates for next year’s local elections.
Sadly for the incumbent councillor, Roger Robinson (pictured), he became the patsy – and lost his right to stand in the elections (See Letters on page 15).
But, putting partisan politics aside, I can only admire the degree of planning that must have gone into that evening, so as to pull of such a political heist.
Bearing in mind that before you are entitled to cast a vote for a candidate you have had to endure six months membership of the Labour Party, a faction must have engaged in a carefully planned conspiracy, along mafia lines, to ensure that the candidates of their choice emerged victors of the evening.
But political mafias are a cliché of politics. Irish mafias are known to have dominated Islington politics in the 1970s, as well as some Camden wards in the same decade, not to mention left-wing mafias, all of whom have packed meetings for the desired results.

No fangs for the memory!

From left: Camden Council leader Jane Roberts, exhibition curator Mimi Romily and Christoper Lee

DON’T mention Dracula! That was the stern instruction handed to library staff when actor Christopher Lee came to the Camden Archive Centre in Holborn on Tuesday night.
Mr Lee, who played Dracula in a series of Hammer horror films, Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, and Count Dooku in the latest Star Wars movies, was the unlikely choice to launch an exhibition about notable Asians in Camden at the Theobalds Road library in Holborn.
The most notable thing about Camden Asians at the launch was their absence. Apart from former mayor Councillor Nasim Ali, there weren’t any.
Instead around a dozen library staff, Mr Lee’s entourage and a handful of dignitaries heard the former Hammer star speak for 45 minutes about his and fellow cast members’ performances – including his own in the film Jinnah, the controversial but critically-acclaimed 1997 biopic of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
He said: “I’ve never had such good reviews.”
The party mood wasn’t helped by the saturnine actor, who initially refused to be photographed with exhibition curator Mimi Romily or council leader Dame Jane Roberts, whom he rather endearingly called “Lady Jane”.
Eventually, he relented, but the highlight for many came halfway through his speech when an enormous thunderclap rocked the building. The way Lee icily ignored the lightning was far more frightening than any pantomime theatrics could ever be.
Later, Ms Romily told me: “I asked him to come along and say something at a book signing at Harrods. I think he expected more people to be here.
“He doesn’t like people talking about Dracula. It’s just something he did a long time ago and he’d rather be remembered for Jinnah.”