Politicians working from home creates fascinating new parlour game – Aidan Smith

Aidan Smith and his children have been enjoying spotting books and other items in the background as politicians speak to the nation from their homes amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Matt Hancock reveals he has coronavirus and that there's a book by satirical cartoonist Matt on his bookshelf (Picture: @MattHancock/PA Wire )

At the end of the first full week of our cooped-up, locked-down existence, it was one of those moments which prompted a collective judder. The Health Secretary had tested positive.

But the sombre mood, in our house and maybe yours, too, lasted no time at all. “That’s a Newcastle United strip!” exclaimed our eldest son, who has heat-seeking detection powers for football team badges. I freeze-framed Matt Hancock and, sure enough, it was.

Eldest daughter spotted something else: “That box is from the Science Museum – we’ve been there!” Then it was youngest daughter’s turn: “He’s got the Red Book!” At this I spat my toast across the kitchen. “No, Daddy, not Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book full of those self-evident truths such as ‘In waking a tiger, use a long stick’ – Mr Hancock’s a Conservative, silly. I mean a PCHR, personal child health record, which is known colloquially as the Red Book. We all had one and now baby Hector’s got his. You remember us all arriving into the world, right?”

Okay, I exaggerate for comic effect, but only slightly. When our politicians speak to us on TV right now – indeed, when just about anyone does – they’re stuck at home, too. Sometimes they retreat to their studies for these interviews and that’s when our family gets to play our new parlour game, What’s On the Bookcase?

The game is fully patented and we’re anticipating a firm bid from Waddingtons for the rights. Okay, I’m jesting again, but come on, we’re all in need of diversion and a bit of fun, and noseying around other people’s bookshelves provides this.

A bit of fun, but also illuminating. Bookshelves are universal in that almost all of us have one, and yet no two are the same. We can learn about a person from the books they possess, and even more from the books they choose to put on display.

Hancock shuns tidying the shelf

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned any of the books on Hancock’s shelves. The only one I could make out by stopping the footage, because it was front-facing, was by the newspaper cartoonist Matt. Possibly, in view of the fact they share a name, Hancock gets given one of these collections of funnies every Christmas. This, along with the other stuff on display, humanises Hancock. Previously on TV he’d always been unsmiling, tense, robotic.

In a different age – say, the materialistic 1980s when the subliminal message of the quiz show Through the Keyhole seemed to be that while some folk were very rich, their taste was quite appalling – the apparent absence of big, important tomes on the Health Secretary’s shelves would be worthy of ridicule. But Hancock had elected not to tidy up his shelves and remove the family gubbins. We’re right in the eye of a global pandemic and he’s got the symptoms. He probably decided: “The country shall take me as they find me.” Now, you might be wondering if a spin doctor told him not to de-clutter, but that’s very cynical of you and not what’s required right now.

It’s still permissible, though, to allow yourself the odd smile when more bookshelves hove into view and, well, some of the titles just scream at you, demanding attention like a Love Island hussy. The clip of Hancock self-isolating was followed by Boris Johnson doing the same thing, his shelves being similarly indecipherable but leatherbound in red and doubtless weighty but probably quite dull. No 10, after all, is not his permanent address. Then the BBC report moved to the home of Guto Harri, Johnson’s former communications director. I pressed pause on the remote: second shelf from the top, black and imposing, War and … War and … oh it’s on the tip of my tongue … War and Peace!

The Man Who Invented Sex

What’s on my bookshelves? I thought you’d never ask. The Scottish Football Book No 14, The Secret Life of Sooty, Skinhead by Richard Allen, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Mark Lewisohn’s epic saga of the Beatles, The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert van Thal, Kenneth Roy’s The Invisible Spirit – A Life of Post-War Scotland, This is My Country by W. Gordon Smith (my dad), everything by Martin Amis, many Updikes, three celebrations of Mad magazine, the New Musical Express Encyclopedia of Rock and The Man Who Invented Sex, a biography of Harold Robbins.

“Ah, Harold Robbins! I thought you said Harold Robinson!” This was Basil Fawlty sneering at his wife for her fiction preferences, then when a guest he’d been fawning over and trying to impress admitted to also liking Robbins, backtracking furiously. We can all be snobby about books, though, and you should see the ones I’m not telling you about. In this I suppose I’m no different to David Cameron.

Promoting last year’s memoirs in a newspaper interview, the former PM removed a book about Hitler before the photographer came round, this being revealed by his inquisitor on Twitter. Cameron was defended by a historian – politicians should read about the Fuhrer, this wasn’t in itself an endorsement of fascism – but you could understand his jitteriness having been outed before for having bland shelves not exclusively devoted to books and containing plenty of DVDs with one wag claiming he could spot Nude for Satan (1974 Italian horror flick, heroine gets molested by a giant spider).

Over the last couple of days, though, there’s been a noticeable reduction in bookshelves as backdrops.

Shadow Health Secretary Richard Ashworth wistfully went with a painting of a busy beach, something none of us will see any time soon, while veteran Scottish showbiz hack Ross King chose Roger Moore knocking back a martini. It’s disappointing if the fad’s curve has flattened but I won’t give up trying to find Anthony Powell’s Books Do Furnish a Room.