Her empty place was the space Toby would have filled had she been able to hang on to him. But she couldn’t, and neither could she ever have any more children. But then he went and did it on his own, which I thought was rather nice.”I suppose I should say at this point that I’ve always believed no one in their right mind would ever want to be a politician, that you have to be socially or emotionally crippled in some way, that you have to have something missing in your nature that desperately needs filling. Yes, she says, “but then he snuck off and joined the Labour party when I wasn’t watching! I care about his values, of course, but would never have said to him: `You must join the Labour party.’ It wouldn’t have been right.

She wears a little locket round her neck, which Toby gave her, and which contains a sweet, penny-sized photograph of him and her, smiling like mad. Toby, a city lawyer, was a Tory when they first rediscovered each other which, I say, must have made for some interesting discussions. She does, of course, have the one child, her son Toby, with whom she was recently reunited, having given him up for adoption in 1964. There is this sweet, vulnerable bit in her but, you know, she’s in favour of capital punishment, and against abortion in all circumstances, even when someone’s been RAPED…”.Clare is superbly motherly. Indeed, the first thing she does when we meet is tuck in the tag on my T-shirt which, being a sophisticated, together kind of person, seems to be sticking out the back “Thanks mum,” I say “That’s alright love,” she says. You can’t imagine Harriet Harman doing such a thing or, on the other side, Anne Widdecombe, whom Clare once saw “having her nails done in Army & Navy. She would give me six meals a day if she could, and spoils me endlessly.”Clare does, yes, give off this great charge of womanly warmth.

My mother can’t help cooking for 900, even when she’s only making a TV supper for my dad.Clare says that is just like her mother, Joan, with whom she still shares a house when she returns to her Birmingham constituency at weekends “She produces great feasts She can’t help herself. She says that sounds a fine idea “although there are 900 of us!” I say that’s OK My mother, being a Jewish mother, can come over to cook. I say she can have the spare room in my house, if she likes, in exchange for a bit of hoovering and childcare and the promise that I have free use of her Badedas, should I want it, although I’m not sure I do. She says the department will be moving out soon, although she isn’t sure where they’ll be going. Although I understand Cherie has one,” she replies mischievously, with a naughty little look in her Eskimo eyes.Now Secretary of State for International Development, we meet at her department, which is housed on a floor of a nasty, modern, high-rise in Victoria.

“I dart in, try on a couple of things, then take or leave them. I don’t have time for endless shopping.” So, no personal shopping consultant at Selfridges, then, but do you have a New Labour personal trainer yet? “No. thank you.”) She has a terrific bosom, one which, if it ever appeared on Page 3, would have to continue on page 4 and possibly 5.Her grey, very un-Barbra Follet, possibly viscose, shirt stretches with a great deal of effort across it Her shirt is probably Richards or Wallis or Dorothy Perkins. (“I used to think I was an Eskimo foundling.”) She has slender, well-turned ankles (“Do you think so? How nice. Although, at the height of the tabloids’ various vendettas against her (especially when she was campaigning against Page 3), she was described as “too ugly to rape” with hair “you could fry chips in”, it’s just absurdly untrue She is, actually, tremendously fine to look at She has excellent cheekbones. She may even think there can be no greater one.This is not, however, to say Clare isn’t beautiful Or sexy She is both, I think.