Hello and

the Red Box Politics Podcast from The Times.

I'm Matt Chorley.

This is part two of our PMQ special.

In part one I spoke to Aisha Haso Rika and Tom Hamilton about their backroom roles

prepping Ed Millaband and Harriet Harmon for PMQs. In this episode I speak to three people who sat on

the other side of the fence, all of them as Times Sketchwriters. I'm joining the studio by Patrick Kidd, Matthew

Paris and and Trennerman. So let's start then with the three of you. Just explain when you were

the Times Sketch writer and who it was that you used to see at PMQ.

So let's listen, if we do it in chronological order, so we'll start with you Matthew.

I was the Times Sketch writer from 1988 until about 2001, as far as I can remember and PMQs was always the the centerpiece of the

week it didn't actually mean that it always yielded the best sketches but it was always there and important

just because it was PMQs even if it wasn't particularly interesting in those days

it was a Margaret Thatcher who wasn't a particularly good performer at PMQ.

She had the eloquence of an electric drill, really.

She would just sort of shout the standard answer to things in a finger wagging

kind of way but but she was quite impregnable and and so the sheer force of her impregnability did make it something worth watching,

though it rarely led to any exciting verbal acrobatics and never to any wit on her part.

So you had Thatcher, then John Major, and Tony Bates. You've covered quite a gamut of, and countless opposition leaders in that time.

It was hard sketching John Major at PMQs because I always liked him very much and you just saw a

man everyone used the word hapless and so it keeps coming to mind and often he had a really good story to tell but he didn't

prosper in the sort of gallery where everyone is just throwing coconuts at you.

...