Under the shadow of a handbag

John Major paid a rare visit back to the Commons yesterday. He spoke to the public administration committee, which is looking at the honours system.

Apparently people are desperate for honours. When he was prime minister, they would take him by the arm and tell him how much they deserved one. Or two.

Some would get their friends to say what tip-top people they were. This didn't work. In Major-speak: "People rather retreated down the list when that happened."

It must have been awful. Like John Cleese telling himself not to mention the war, they had to stop themselves from uttering the name of a certain former Tory MP.

"People wanted to curry favour, did they?" they wanted to say, but bit their tongues just in time.

"Egg on their faces, eh?" they might have added, but, thank heavens, didn't.

Ian Liddell-Grainger, a Tory, wanted to know if he thought that journalists, especially sketchwriters, should be given honours.

I was deeply offended by this. Why in heaven's name should any of us want an honour given by this lot?

Mr Liddell-Grainger pursued him. Having afixed a peerage for Jeffrey Archer, did he feel that it should be revoked?

He didn't. "If people have been sent to prison, and served their sentence, that is a punishment already paid."

No doubt, but if he had been let off, you can bet no-one would have said, "Jeffrey hasn't been punished enough. Seize his peerage!" On the contrary, he'd have been even more unbearable.

There was a good moment when Mr Major was asked why he had given the first hereditary baronetcy for 23 years to the late Denis Thatcher. He looked uncomfortable.

"Powerful representations were made which I felt inclined to accept at the time," he said. The committee gave him, jointly, a knowing look.

"I wouldn't draw any conclusions," he said, but it was too late. We could see the shadow of the handbag on his office door, the menacing creak of the hinges, and that voice, the voice he hoped he'd never hear again: "It matters to me, John, and if it matters to me, it should matter to you. I'm sure you have caught my meaning, John ..."

Anne Campbell, the comely MP for Cambridge and the only woman present, asked about honours and the class system. He suddenly kicked into mega-flirtation mode. He swivelled round and smiled at her. His eyes didn't twinkle; they were more like heat-seeking lasers.

"Life is full of contradictions, Anne," he told her. "A backstreet boy from Brixton could become prime minister. Or the MP for Cambridge could move into Downing St - in due course!" he leered.

I thought he was about to leap over the table and clasp her hands in his.

But he gathered himself (and possibly adjusted his clothing). Asked what changes he would make to the system, he thought it would be nice to have something honourees could wear to show off, like the little coloured button they have in France. But of course in the new, coarse Britain, it wouldn't be a discreet pin but a jokey T-shirt, possibly labelled: "Once a Knight - is not enough!" Or, "OBE? Oh, behave!" Or, "You can kiss my ermine baubles."

At the end he was asked why he hadn't become a knight or a peer himself. (Though he is a PC and a CH, which is enough to get on with.)

Well, he said, he didn't want it merely because he had been prime minister. In a fine Majorism, he told us, "I don't believe in automaticity."

Crazy word, crazy meaning! You'll find it in the Scrabble dictionary but not, I fear, in the OED.

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