UK's JFK?!The Daily Telegraph 01 Apr 2008
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has spoken unusually frankly about his romantic past, admitting to sleeping with "no more than 30" women and revealing how he fell in love at first sight with wife Miriam.
In a no-holds-barred interview with magazine GQ, Mr Clegg recalled being "pretty gobsmacked" on first meeting the Spanish senator's daughter when they were both studying in Belgium.
After first wooing her in French, he learnt to speak Spanish for her sake, he said.
Pressed to reveal more, the Lib Dem leader said he had been in love twice before meeting his wife - once in an "unrequited" passion and once with a childhood sweetheart - but "definitely" regarded her as the love of his life.
And he went on to respond to a series of increasingly personal questions from interviewer Piers Morgan, who asked whether he saw himself as "good in bed".
"I don't think I am particularly brilliant or particularly bad," said the Lib Dem leader.
"Since the only judge of that is my wife..."
Mr Morgan insisted that there had been other women in his life and he replied: "Yes OK, well, not for a very long time."
When Morgan asked to know how many, Mr Clegg attempted to brush off the question by answering: "Not a list as long as yours, I'm sure".
But the interviewer would not be deflected, asking: "How many are we talking: 10, 20, 30?" "No more than 30," replied Mr Clegg.
"It's a lot less than that."
PM: "Ever had any complaints?"
NC: "Oh God yes, of course."
PM: "What would your wife say?"
NC: "I think she'd be very content and happy."
PM: "Would you ever be unfaithful to her?"
NC: "I certainly hope not."
Remembering his first meeting with Miriam, he said: "We were at the same college in Belgium. She was leaning against a wall outside an induction lecture, and that was that...
"I was pretty gobsmacked when I first saw her... Her English was rubbish and my Spanish non-existent. So we got by in French for a bit but then I learnt Spanish."
Mr Clegg is not the first politician to be subjected to a grilling on his personal life by GQ.
Former Conservative leader William Hague famously told the magazine in 2000 that he drank as many as 14 pints of beer a day while delivering drink to pubs in a student holiday job.
The Lib Dem leader was asked about his own alcohol intake, and said he did not drink every day and was last drunk "probably last summer... drinking wine with my family in France".
The alcoholism of his predecessor Charles Kennedy was "very difficult and unpleasant, for him and the party", said Mr Clegg, who said it would be "pretty hard" to run the country as an alcoholic.
A lot less than 30 is how many?
By CRAIG BROWN
05 April 2008
The Daily Telegraph
Calculators at the ready, and no conferring. It would take a skilled mathematician to work out what exactly Nick Clegg meant by "a lot less than 30''. Obviously 29 could never be called a lot less than 30; I'd say that 25, though less than 30, could not be termed a lot less. To my mind, the highest figure that could nevertheless be called a lot less than 30 is 24. But then one is also a lot less than 30, and so, too, is zero. But I don't suppose zero is an option, as Nick Clegg is married with children.
You know that a week has been uneventful when the news that the leader of the Liberal Democrats has admitted sleeping with "a lot less'' than 30 women is given its own headline. Paddy Ashdown became known to one and all as Paddy Pantsdown after admitting sleeping with less than three women, but more than one; now it seems that Nick Clegg will be known for the rest of his life as Nick Cleggover. At least we never had to come to terms with Sir Fling Campbell.
Every now and then, one famous person or another makes news by totting up his conquests and boasting about the score. In 1977, the Belgian crime writer Georges Simenon announced: "I did the sum a year or two ago and, since the age of 13?, I have had 10,000 women.'' As he was 74 at the time, this gave him an unlikely average of a different woman every day for 60 years.
If he was telling the truth, Simenon makes the Romanian tennis ace Ilie Nastase seem monastic. In his autobiography, Nastase wrote: "I think I've slept with 2,500 women.'' A year or two ago, the high-waisted TV personality Simon Cowell claimed in an interview: "I've had between 70 and 100 women, if I were to hazard a guess.'' Meanwhile, in his bumptious autobiography, The Living Legend, the chirpy DJ Tony Blackburn boasted: "Sex is very important to me. I adore making love. I've made love to about 250 women.'' All in all, Nick Clegg has a lot of catching up to do. You may attempt to argue that leaders of the main political parties and Tony Blackburn have different aims and values, but there you would be wrong. There is in fact an intriguing love-line, detailed in the invaluable 1987 reference book Who's Had Who, that links President Reagan with Tony Blackburn in just eight bed-hops.
For your interest, the chain goes Ronald Reagan - Nancy Reagan - Clark Gable - Ava Gardner - Frank Sinatra - Carol White - Richard O'Sullivan - Tessa Wyatt - Tony Blackburn. (Incidentally, another chain linking high politics to low pop goes like this: Eva Peron - Porfiro Rubirosa - Ava Gardner - Sir Gordon White - Vanessa Llewellyn - Dai Llewellyn - Tessa Dahl - Peter Sellers - Britt Ekland - Les McKeown of The Bay City Rollers.)
Generally speaking, politicians like to underestimate their conquests, while showbiz and arts figures prefer to overestimate them. The only exception is Jimmy Carter who decided to give an interview to Playboy just before the 1976 presidential election so as to jazz up his rather goody-goody Baptist image. "I've looked on a lot of women with lust,'' he confided, just as the interview was winding down. "I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognises I will do - and I have done it - and God forgives me for it.'' The admission (or was it a strange sort of boast?) seemed to pay off, as two weeks later Carter was elected President.
Other presidents have taken the more traditional less-than-two-but-more-than-none route, even when their truer total might have run to double or even triple figures. "Move over, this is your president,'' LBJ said, a mite bullishly, having entered the bedroom of a female aide at his ranch in Texas.
When Kennedy became President in 1961, an aide predicted, "This administration is going to do for sex what the last one did for golf'' - and so it transpired. There are obviously many possible bed-hopping lines to be traced to and from JFK, but one of the most colourful goes: JFK - Marilyn Monroe - Frank Sinatra - Jill St John - Robert Wagner - Natalie Wood - Warren Beatty - Joan Collins - Ryan O'Neal - Farrah Fawcett Majors - Sylvester Stallone.
The only prime ministerial chain that Britain can offer in competition is, it must be admitted, somewhat pitiful, with just two stops. It goes like this: John Major - Edwina Currie. At a stretch, it could, I suppose, be extended to three: John Major - Edwina Currie - Steve Norris, and then from "Shagger'' Norris to heaven-knows-where.
Mrs Currie has in the past suggested that she and Norris got together when they were sixth-form students in Liverpool, though Steve Norris rather ungallantly pooh-poohs the very idea. "For reasons best known to herself, Edwina has since chosen to suggest that our relationship was rather more developed'', he wrote in his 1996 autobiography. "She may, I suppose, have imagined a brief fumble under her school blouse behind St George's Hall to be an orgasmic experience, but I fear I was less impressed.'' Who are we to believe - Norris or Currie? There are some things that are too painful to contemplate. Either way, Edwina Currie and Steve Norris are a far cry from Marilyn Monroe and Jack Kennedy.
Now that Ken Livingstone has entered the fray, announcing that he has five children by three women, the question is raised: should we be any more interested in the sexual appetites of politicians than we are in the political appetites of sex symbols?
I doubt the news that Jordan voted for three different parties in five different elections would merit much of a headline. Yet whenever a politician claims to have had sex, we find ourselves eager to read on. Ten, 20, 30?
Do I hear an advance on 30? And how many children does that make? At the moment, only Ann Widdecombe is not prepared to join in the fun.
For too long, party fund-raising at the constituency level has been restricted to guessing the weight of a chocolate cake, or the number of boiled sweets contained in a glass jar. The Lib Dems could raise a small fortune by getting their members to place their bets on the exact number of their leader's sleepovers. If it really is more than 20 but "a lot less'' than 30, my fiver would be on 22, but who's to tell?
Lib Dem leader admits his pillow talk was all a bit of a distraction
15 April 2008
The Daily Telegraph
NICK Clegg expressed regret yesterday at discussing his prowess as a lover in an interview with a men's magazine.
Mr Clegg, who pledged when he became Liberal Democrat leader to make political life as "open and accessible'' as possible, was asked by Piers Morgan how many women he had slept with. "No more than 30,'' he replied.
After four months of trying to make an impact as leader of the third party Mr Clegg's claims in GQ magazine catapulted him into the limelight.
However, he conceded yesterday that he had attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. "If I have any regrets, it is that it serves as a distraction from the things that I passionately care about, which [are] that I think there are far too many families who are over-stretched [and] hard-pressed, [and] we don't yet have local authorities which are as environmental or as tough on crime and anti-social behaviour as I think we can be,'' he said.
In the interview, Mr Clegg gave a modest appraisal of his bedroom skills when he said: "I don't think I am particularly brilliant or particularly bad''. The remarks irritated Lib Dem MPs and heaped embarrassment on their leader, underline his inexperience. Mr Clegg, 41, who is married with a child, has been an MP since 2005.
In the ensuing furore, he was dubbed "Nick Cleggover'' by the tabloid press.
