Brief Encounter #12

Christine Hamilton and Boris Becker
THIS brief encounter is a tale of two blondes and a missing book token!
It is April 2005 and I am a guest of Radio Five Live at the BBC Television Centre. I have been invited down to London for the day after being voted Five Live’s Football Fan of the Year for 2004 (a story for another blog maybe!).
It is late morning and I am due to appear for a five minute slot at the end of Victoria Derbyshire’s radio show – Victoria and her producer Ian Shoesmith had organised the Football Fan of the Year poll three months earlier.
Ian has briefed me about my short interview on the show – about the costs of inland rail and air travel – and I am waiting outside the recording studio for my turn.
The studio door opens and a tall and very familiar blonde man brushes past me, says ‘excuse me’ and smiles. It is three times Wimbledon champion and TV commentator Boris Becker. He is smartly dressed in a sharp suit and, having completed his piece for Victoria’s show is rushing off to his next appointment.
Behind Boris an equally familiar blonde-haired figure has entered the studio to be interviewed by Victoria. She is instantly recognisable as Christine Hamilton, the wife of former disgraced ‘cash for questions’ Tory MP Neil Hamilton. By 2005, Christine had reinvented herself as a TV personality in her own right. In 2002 she appeared in series one of the gross reality TV show I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and in 2004 as a panelist on Loose Women.
In real life she has the same air and swagger of arrogance so often captured in her TV moments on Have I Got News for You.
Her slot on Victoria’s show lasts about eight minutes. Leaving, she brushes past me without any acknowledgement before her PA leads her away.
I am on next… I am quietly ushered into the studio and sit diagonally opposite Ms Derbyshire.
The interview is brief and our exchange is light and full of good humour.
Before we close, Victoria asks me live on air whether I have enjoyed my visit to Television Centre and whether I received the £50 book token as part of my prize for being Football Fan of the Year.
I tell her I have had a fabulous time and without a second thought add: “I think Christine Hamilton has left the book token in a brown envelope outside the studio”. There is a muffled guffaw as the show closes.
NOTE: Nine years on and the book token has still not arrived. Neil and Christine Hamilton are both now prominent members of UKIP.