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A Short Story

This is a guest post by moggy (who, for the avoidance of doubt, is female)

I can’t believe he’s done it again.

Probably a good time to air my Derek Draper story.

I was about 19 or 20, and involved in Young Labour, my boyfriend Stephen was the chair of the UCL Labour society and we all believed that Blair would usher in a new era of equality and happiness and what-not.

I went to some thing in that pub opposite the houses of parliament that Dolly had set up to do with London Young Fabians and I was chatting to him afterwards. Stephen had left. Suddenly he changed the topic of the chat from the state of the NHS in London to a stream of total filth about what he would like to do to me. I was flattered, actually. I was young and no one had ever said such dirty things before, especially not so unexpectedly. I was turned on, I admit it.So I agreed to meet him at his flat.

I know this is bad and slutty behaviour and was totally unfair to lovely Stephen (who was younger and fitter and much better looking than Draper – I later found out Draper agreed with me but that’s later…) and I am not saying I come out of this looking good.

During the time between meeting him and the date of our assignation I started to learn more things about him. It turned out that I hadn’t turned his head, and he said these sorts of things to anyone, male or female, he spent 5 minutes with who he found even vaguely attractive.

My pride was hurt. I thought I was special. I thought he had fallen madly and deeply in lust with me and I was cross to discover that he did that to all the girls (and boys) and also I found out that he liked his then girlfriend Charlotte Raven (hatchet faced Myra Hindley lookalike) to tie him up and call him a naughty little boy.

So I hatched a plan.

I told Stephen all about the dirty talk and how he wanted to get me into his flat (actually, no, he wanted to take me to the Atlantic first because he’s such a naff, arriviste northern monkey he thought that was classy) and I suggested we nip his political career in the bud by me going round to his flat, cooking for him, seducing him, tying him up with all the chains in his drawers, maybe having some drug paraphanalia around (he was a massive coke fiend then) and taking loads of polaroids.

It couldn’t fail.

It failed.

I arrived at his front door before him, he was on the way back from conference. Peter Mandelson dropped him off – we were introduced, it was very surreal. I had bought fillet steak and stuff because I was cooking and I said I had everything bar condiments, Mandleson made a rubbish ‘condoms’ joke and left.

We got in and Derek listened to his answerphone messages. One from a very exitable bloke saying his new paperback was out – I didn’t realise this was his drug dealer (I was young) saying he had lots of coke, then there was another one from another excitable type to say that he’d arranged a photo shoot for Lord Litchfield to take an iconic group shot of all the Blair Babes.

He had nicked 3 bottles of Champagne from Tony Blair’s hotel bedroom so we started to get stuck in. A bit later we sort of moved into the bedroom, he showed me his bottom drawed full of whips and chains, it was pretty impressive (his life sized cardboard cutout of John Kennedy was just a bit weird) – but then he locked the front door from the inside and hid the key. This wasn’t part of my cunning plan and I got a bit nervous. He asked me why I was bothered and looked out of the window.

This is where it all descends into complete farce.

Stephen was standing outside and Derek turned to me and said ‘what’s your boyfriend doing outside?’. There wasn’t much I could say. “I’m going out to talk to him” he said.

He went outside.

Stephen gave him a bit of a kicking. They came back.

Now it gets even stranger – we all made up and had a really nice evening, no really. Unfortunately there was only enough steak for two people but I cut a little bit off both of them so we could all have some. Stephen and I slept in his flatmate’s bed and we left in the morning all smiles.

I did take one polaroid of him but he was standing up, fully clothed and just looking a bit surprised.

He thought he looked good in it though, so I let him keep it.

UPDATE

I have already said that I behaved like a stupid slut, and I was quite open about why I got annoyed and wanted to do him over, so to all these people going “well I think she comes out this looking awful” or “what a stupid slut” or “I deduce that she tried to stitch him up because of sour grapes” – I say “I KNOW – I already said that”.

And to those who think it is made up, I mean seriously – how could you make something like that up? Why would you make something like that up? I had a bloke from Private Eye ring me up because the story had got out (I was never exactly discreet) – I think somone told John Prescott’s son. The man from Private Eye said that the Sun had the story and were going to run it and would I like to do a spoiler with them. I said no so they ran it blind and got it mostly wrong.

Here’s a quote from a Guardian piece about him on his wikipedia page :

“Private Eye published a story about a “member of Blair’s kitchen cabinet” getting involved in threesomes, bondage and cocaine. They called him “Mr X” but the euphemism was quite unnecessary. In the Blairs’ suite at party conference, Cherie greeted Derek with a knowing smile, “Ahh, look who it is – Mr X.'”

It’s about what happened that night, but there wasn’t a threesome – in fact again, if you read what I’ve written I didn’g go any further than snogging him – but when Charlotte Raven heard about me she did get me on the phone and ask me if I would like to have a threesome with them. I said no.

I can’t say I regret being such a twit. I think young people should do daft things, and I still think the story is hilarious.

I can say with my hand on my heart that I learned absolutely nothing from the experience.