So, do you feel similarly towards the
people of Lewes?
Well, no I don’t because I think my
situation’s different, I’ve been around
a long time and so on, I don’t feel it
personally. What I feel is that there
were two factors which caused the
election to go the way it did here. The
first was the Tories engendered fear of
the SNP and Labour - not dissimilar to
the fear campaign around 1992 which
produced a similar result, so in that
sense I wasn’t surprised entirely by the
result. When people are frightened they
return to voting Tory, so that’s part of
the calculation that Cameron has made.
And the second reason was because
people in Lewes who have Labour and
Green inclinations wanted to punish us
for the coalition. Well, they did that, but
they punished themselves rather more
because they’ve now a got a Tory MP
and Tory majority government, so they
will reflect on that.
Have you heard from many of your
supporters since the defeat? I’m sure
you have…
One of the nicest things I had was within
a week, I received literally hundreds, I
mean hundreds and hundreds, I mean
hundreds and hundreds of emails and
letters and cards, and even gifts from
people. I didn’t find the losing emotional,
but I did find reading the letters quite
emotional. I mean, you know, people
were very generous and kind in their
comments including people I wouldn’t
think were going to write in, you know,
Conservative councillors and so on,
to say “I didn’t vote for you but if you
need anything just ask etc”, so people I
wouldn’t expect to write in have written
in and that’s been very nice – a bit like
reading your obituary before you’re dead,
actually!
And how is your music career going?
I wouldn’t quite call it a career, but my
musical activities! I had an album that
came out which was quite well-received
and people quite liked it. There are still
expectations from politicians that are
really that low so if anything you do is
reasonably okay it gets a good response.
It went down very well. I think it might
have gained a few votes, you know, from
making it a bit more human, a bit human
– that wasn’t the reason I did it, but it had
a side-effect. And then after that came
this EP which I had no time to promote
which was a shame, but we did actually
record another album last summer,
the band did, and the EP tracks were
a slightly different style – so that’s the
music I recorded at the time which is why
I didn’t – I hived them off and did them
separately. But there is an album which
is being recorded, it’s being mixed, it’s
being mastered, it’s ready to go, we’ve
got publicity shots, it’s all waiting for me
to just press the button. So, it’ll be out
later this year, I hope.
I mean I’m not going to make money out
of it, but I just do it for fun.
I think it’s a great release - music is a
great release, and of course what I’ve
done, what I had to stop for the election
because of Ofcom, I’ve picked up my
radio show again, my weekly radio show
on Seahaven FM, so, and that was the
first one last Sunday again, so I’ll be
doing that regularly, and in fact I’ll be
doing, I’ve been discussing doing an
extra show on Seahaven FM now I’ve
got a bit more time, which is, haven’t
quite got a title for it yet, but a kind of
different sort of sixties show where I
play tracks from the sixties people
won’t have heard, so not the old charts
stuff, nothing in the top 50, but other
tracks that should have been hits or
lesser-known tracks by well-known
artists or whatever, so I’m going to do
an hour a week of that. I’m recording
the first one on Sunday.
What else is on the agenda for the
future?
Well, I’ve got a bit of time to sort things
out because there’s a, there’s an
allowance which the House of Commons
gives you to put your affairs in order,
because I’ve been made redundant,
effectively, so like anybody else after 28
years you get a redundancy payment
which gives you a stage to sort yourself
out. I don’t know. I’ll see what comes up
and see what offers come in and I’ll V