Chapter 28 In which Charlie realises that the problem with political jokes is that they get elected

Charlie Windsor woke up sweating. It was only a nightmare, but it was one he had had before. In it he was on the stump, doing what he did best - negative campaigning. As he came to the end of his sentence his voice began to rise as he uttered his rhetorical question: 'what have the Lib Dems and Labour ever done for us?' Instead of the applause he was expecting, a voice shouted out 'old age pensions!', then another shouted 'the National Health Service!' Pretty soon there were contributions from all around his audience: 'Unemployment benefit!' 'the minimum wage!' 'Windfall tax on privatised utilities after the Tories sold them off too cheaply! 'Votes for men!' 'Votes for women!' It was starting to sound like a bloody film script, but thankfully he woke up before it got any more depressing.

Charlie recalled the words of Martin Leyland, about having to distance himself from the lame duck mayor. Worryingly, at the moment he was playing second fiddle to the mayor, yet having to openly support his every idea, his every political move. This wasn't how it was supposed to have turned out. As he lay in bed he remembered when he had arrived in Westphalia-on-Sea. He remembered how he had gradually raised his profile through a continual process of well-timed exposure in the media. He built himself up to be the voice of the Conservatives in the area, and now look at the situation. Dr Pangloss had come from the obscurity of estate agency to be at the top of the Tory heap, and Charlie Windsor, as his campaign manager, had helped put him there. Pangloss was in the paper every day, and now Charlie was having to work extra hard just to stand still in terms of self-publicity. The mayor had his own column in the paper, and so did Charlie's rival, Brian Localbloke. But what did Charlie himself have? A blog read by about twelve people, and the odd letter in the Westphalia Express, where he had to compete for space with people giving thanks to strangers for helping them after a fall in the local supermarket. And you couldn't just write letters out of thin air - they had to be linked to something. When there was nothing interesting locally to write about he couldn't just write 'Hey everybody, I'm still here you know, waiting for the election, don't forget about me.' No, at such times he was reduced to commenting on Gordon Brown's policy on the EU Treaty, or pointing out what a dead loss Gordon Brown was if you conveniently forgot that he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years and was now Prime Minister. The more Charlie considered his position the more disgruntled he became, especially when he remembered that in the good old days before elected mayors it was he, Charlie Windsor, who had been the undisputed ideas man when he rode into town...

... yes, it was the twenty-ninth of April 2003, but Charlie remembered it as if it was yesterday. Martin Aston was in the paper a lot, with his famous car number plate 8ULL 5H1T. Charlie had sat down with Martin and a few others and come up with some cracking ideas for the future. When the Westphalia Express saw fit to announce that some of the greatest minds on the Cote de Westphalia had been engaged in a little futuristic problem solving it referred to the participants as 'a think-tank group'. And it referred to his '20-20 vision' idea as a 'brainchild'. Yes, he, Charlie Windsor, had headed up a bloody think-tank and had given birth to a brainchild in the same afternoon. A tank full of thinkers and a diminutive cerubellum on legs. And now here he was, playing deputy to the mayor's sheriff. In fact he wasn't even that, because the mayor had a deputy. No, the Westphalia Express didn't come to him for a quote unless all the phones in the Town Hall were going straight to bloody voicemail. Yet back in 2003 it had all been so different. Back then he could suggest turning the clock back to the swinging sixties in Eastphalia to give it a retro look and feel. Yes, he said if you had lampposts and shopfronts from the 1960s visitors would flock into town - it would be shag-tastic, just like an Austin Powers movie. Yes, back then he could come up with an idea every bit as lame as any of Dr Pangloss's, and still get half a page in the Westphalia Express with a big photo as well. That journalist was right - he was going to have to start distancing himself from Pangloss, and start fighting - politics was a dirty business, he thought, but if you wanted an MP's salary you had to jolly well roll your sleeves up get stuck in. Feeling invigorated by this mental pep-talk he jumped out of bed, pulled his Union Jack dressing gown on and saluted the picture of Margaret Thatcher on the wall.