Sketch: Cameron stumbles over country suppers

Kate Devlin

UK Political Correspondent

Friday 15 June 2012

Regrets, Mr Cameron told the Leveson inquiry yesterday, I've had a few.

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Kate Devlin

He could have been forgiven for thinking that sitting in court 76 in London's Royal Courts of Justice was one of them.

Mr Cameron himself set up the public inquiry last year at the height of the phone hacking scandal.

At that stage it appeared a master stroke, instantly dampening the escalating crisis. And yesterday the inquiry appeared to move on to a highly important issue - what was it with the Prime Minister and supper? Every time the word crops up it appears to garner more negative headlines for him. First there was Francis Maude denouncing allegations that Mr Cameron had traded dinners in Downing Street for party donations - they were "kitchen suppers", he insisted. And yesterday what once appeared just to be just a slightly odd way of describing the evening meal cropped up yet again this time in the context of the Leveson inquiry. In a message Rebekah Brooks had told the Prime Minister that they would discuss an issue over a "country supper". How often he had met Mrs Brooks in the country appeared to be a source of confusion for Mr Cameron. Pressed if he had met her "most weekends" during a period when she was both his neighbour and engaged to one of his friends, there was a long pause followed by an "um". The Prime Minister told the inquiry that he would check his notes, but that later proved unnecessary. After the lunch break Mr Cameron returned with good news that he could now update his earlier "vague" answer. His wife, he said, kept a better diary of their weekend whereabouts than he did and had told him that they were only in the country 23 weekends one year and 15 the next. This he said led him to believe that he had only met Mrs Brooks "once every six weeks" during this time. But would Mrs Cameron be less than impressed with the response of Lord Justice Leveson? He murmured to her husband on receipt of the new information, "the great value of wives, Prime Minister".

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Sketch: Cameron stumbles over country suppers

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