Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we ask writers from the magazine to read their pieces out loud.

I'm Natasha Froes and here's what we have this week.

Hamish Badenock on life as a political spouse.

Martin Vanderware on Airport Chaos.

And finally, Aidan Hartley on Africa's love affair with country music.

First up, Hamish Badenock.

When I was a teenage Tory activist in the mid-1990s, I hoped one day I'd be part of a leadership

election campaign.

The energy and the intrigue looked so exciting.

Eventually, I did end up right in the thick of it, but as a political spouse.

These races have changed a lot since then.

Michael Portillo's plan to run against John Major was rumbled when his allies were found to have installed dozens of phone lines in a campaign

headquarters. That was how you did it back in the 1990s. Now, it's all done in WhatsApp groups.

Kemi and I joked about what we would have made of each other back then.

I'm glad we didn't meet.

I'm not sure we would have appreciated each other's qualities at that time.

We met through the Conservative Party more than a decade later when she was the parliamentary

candidate in a safe labour seat.

It was not an auspicious start.

There was a degree of mutual suspicion.

She was the upstart insurgent.

...