Away with the eco-fairy, SIan Berry

Tag: Insulation Tube

After following Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone on the London mayoral campaign trail, the obvious third candidate should have been Brian Paddick, the gay copper Liberal Democrat, but I couldn’t face it. He is the least gay man I’ve ever stood next to. He fails to tick a single box in the Julian Clary scale of queeniness. I suspect his gaydar is being used for a speed trap on the M25.

And how do we know he’s a Liberal Democrat? How can you tell if anyone’s a Liberal Democrat? They are so few things to so many people. So instead of following Paddick I decided to go see how the Greens were faring.

Their mayoral candidate is Siân Berry. Isn’t Siân Berry just the quaintest, most peachy-perfect Green name — half Celtic, half hedgerow.

Siân is a bit of a poppet. With her long flickable blonde hair she has the look of a little woodland creature, with large, dewy, trusting eyes and a ready honest smile to brighten the face of adversity. I wouldn’t normally mention a woman candidate’s looks ahead of her policies, or legs, but in the case of the Greens a pretty one isn’t just unusual, it’s a genetic incongruity. Most of them look like they’ve been thrown together out of leftovers by a travellers’ scarecrow-weaving collective. Green isn’t just a way of life, it’s also the colour of their gums.

Siân’s gums are perfectly pink. She’s just been to the dentist and, to show that she has a blessed life, she has managed to find a National Health one. The first time I met her she was wearing an exhausted multicoloured topcoat that had plainly seen too many picket lines. “That’s nice,” I said. “Where did you get it?” A cheap high street shop, she told me, and then added: “But it’s made in Poland.” Is that a good thing? “Well, it’s not made in the Far East.”

I went to Ealing Broadway in west London to spend a day with her canvassing. Ealing, by chance, was the home of the first wave of Polish immigrants — the pilots who flew out of Northolt during the battle of Britain. Ealing High Street is rather grand. The Victorians called it the queen of suburbs. Charles Jones gave them a very confident gothic town hall and solidly mercantile parades of shops. The first British film studios were here, making those pre-multicultural comedies. Ealing was Dock Green where Dixon had his police station. Fielding wrote Tom Jones here.

Now it’s humming with shoppers and a surprisingly high number of erratically wandering loonies. I’ve been told to wait outside the Nationwide building society. Siân arrives to meet a couple who I had assumed were a care-in-the-community outing, but who turn out to be the leader of the Greens in the London assembly and a local council candidate.