Political "misidentifcation"?
January 12, 2010 4 Comments
Today a load of tweeter are in Grazia. Never heard of ’em myself. Clearly the magazine hadn’t either. If you look at the Alex Hilton piece you will see a pic of Tory guru Steve Hilton.
It got me thinking. What’s the worst political misidentification (not sure if it’s a word but I like the sound of it).
When I was younger and was hosting a corporate event I once mistook Ben Chapman MP (due to just seeing his name tag) and introduced him as Sir Sydey Chapman! Ben kindly put me right and said he wasn’t nearly important enough to be Sir Syndey.
Then of course at the University York Conservative Association I was once talking about John Townend – MP for Bridlington I believe and for 15 minutes someone thought we were talking about Pete Townshend from The Who.
But have you ever “misidentified” anyone? What did you do?
Tory Radio 
I recall the Express slagging off former Labour MP Helen Clark with a big picture of the then PM of New Zealand by the same name
I would guess there must be plenty of mistakes made between David Davis and David Davies. I also was once speaking to Paul Holmes who was my MP in Chesterfield and asked how he was doing a Chairman of the Lib Dems – only to be told he'd lost the position weeks earlier in a reshuffle. More a case of me putting foot in mouth than misidentification on that one!
A story is told of a man who met Princess Margaret at a party, which she was attending relatively incognito, but didn’t recognise her. All he could remember was that she had a sister. After some innocuous introductory banter he asked, “And, by the way, how is your sister?”
“Still Queen.”
Its not as good as that, but when Edwina Curry was still MP in South Derbyshire, some people came round canvassing. My Mum jokingly said to the man who knocked at her door "So who are you getting in instead of Edwina then?" to which he replied "I can't say anything, I'm her husband".