Crewel Luck

“THE role of the modern Member of Parliament has changed a great deal in recent years,” says Greg Barker, MP for Bexhill and Battle, on his website.

He goes on to say that “I am also very active locally” and invites locals to “get in touch”.

The sticky fingers of adolescence are never far from UK politics, and, as the Mail reports on its front page, Mr Barker has left his wife of 14 years for a decorator.

Inside the paper, the decorator has been elevated to the status of “interior designer”. Perhaps losing her man to a decorator is too hard for Celeste Barker, Barker’s wife and mother to their three children? An interior designer is much more the ticket. Better still if Celeste could lose Barker to a leading light in the British aubusson movement.

But whatever the profession of the mistress, Celeste, described by one source as “your typical, loyal Conservative wife”, will surely find it hard to accept that she has been left for a man.

“She is completely devastated,” says the source. “It came completely out of the blue. Nobody had any idea that Barker was gay.”

Nobody? We can think of at least two people who had a pretty fair idea that the honourable member had gone the gay way.
And the Mail catches up with one of them, namely more on Anorak