To say former Northern Secretary, Mo Mowlam, caused shock and horror with her performance on the camp Channel 4 show So Graham Norton yesterday week is something of an understatement. While it didn't upset political sensitivities as Peter Brooke did when he sang My Darling Clementine on the Late Late Show the day in 1992 when seven workmen were killed, it was being said in political circles in London this week that yet again a TV chat show was finishing off a ministerial career.
So what did Mo do? Well she camped it up with the host and other guests, officiated at a wedding of two dogs and told a joke which was both unfunny and coarse. What, she asked, had birthdays, toilet seats and a certain part of a woman's anatomy got in common? Answer: Men miss them. Later she turned to other guests and asked facetiously "do you do drugs?"
Why did she do it? Opinion in London is that she dislikes her new job as cabinet enforcer, which includes drug policy, and she feels undermined by the New Labour controllers who want everyone totally on message, as they say, and not as left-wing, individual and unpredictable as she is.
Tony Blair is believed to be still smarting, as is his wont, over her standing ovation at the 1998 Labour conference and suggestions, however few, that she could be a future party leader.
Number 10 is furious over her refusal to run for Mayor of London considering the mess the party is in now. Indeed a win by "Red" Ken Livingstone, which is generally expected, coming after the Alun Michael fiasco in Wales, would be another disaster for New Labour.
Mo, say sources in London, is being bad-mouthed around the place, and she, as is her wont, is putting it up to them and telling them to f*** off.