Biscuits with Lord McNally
By Tony Grew - 20th May 2011
It is hard not to like Lord McNally, minister of state for justice.
A Westminster insider for more than four decades, there is something of the Boris about him - the bumbling, amiable manner masks a scalpel-sharp mind.
He is also a master of the self-deprecating anecdote - like this little gem from the Lords yesterday.
"By the way, I have just remembered the bit of technology I had forgotten: Twitter.
"Twittering is hard to track down.
"The other day I was at a meeting of senior high-tech advisers, and I kept talking about biscuits.
"Nobody said anything until, in the end, one of them said, "What was that about biscuits?", and I said, "Where they store all this information".
"He said, "Those are cookies", and then all the experts confessed that they had not interrupted because they thought that the minister must know about some new technology that they were not aware of."
Lord McNally must be hoping his boss and friend of 40 years Ken Clarke keeps his job.
In a government full of bright young things, it is comforting to know that there is life after 70.
Have your say...
Please enter your comments below.