(Loosely based on Grimm’s Rumpelstiltskin)
Once upon a time there was a poor political lobbyist, which is in itself an uncommon thing. He spent many years at his trade but even after a lifetime of work the only true treasure that he possessed was his lovely raven-haired daughter, Emily.
Towards the twilight of the man’s career a combination of luck and subject matter expetise finally gave him access to the country's top political hombre and in order to appear as a person of more significance than he really was he told the great politician that his daughter could spin the worst gobbledygook into solid gold prose.
"That's a talent worth having on the team", said the politician to the lobbyist. "If she's really as good at this presentational stuff as you say she is bring her to my office tomorrow morning and I'll put her to the test".
The next morning the lobbyist and his daughter attended upon the head of state. After some polite preliminaries the young woman was taken into a room full of the most incomprehensible government policy papers, briefing documents and committee meeting minutes.
She was made to sit at a computer and one of the politician's more officious aides said, "Now, you're not to leave here until you've finished the lot. We want all of this bullshit turned into easily readable prose that gets our message across but also hides the skeletons in the closet. If you fail your father will never work in Westminster again". Then he closed the door and left her all on her own to finish the job.
So the poor lobbyist's beautiful daughter sat there and wondered exactly what she was meant to do. All she ever did at her father's office was make coffee and answer the phones. She wasn't even sure how to switch the computer on, let alone how to use a word processor. She had no idea how she was going to turn all of this officialese into plain and clear text.
No matter how hard she thought about it, she simply couldn't work out what to do and became terribly disconsolate and miserable. She tried to read one of the documents, but apart from recognising some of the more obvious words and phrases, she was completely stumped by all of the jargon and, realising that both she and her father would soon be the butt of jokes throughout the Westminster village, she started to cry like a baby.
Suddenly the door burst open and into the room stepped a small, bald man in a brown three-piece suit. He looked the girl up and down a couple of times and said, "Good morning, miss, why are you crying so bitterly?"
"Oh", answered Emily, "I have to rewrite all these official government papers so the common folk can read them but not really understand them. I haven't got a clue how to do it".
"It's just a question of spin", said the wee bald man with a chuckle. "Now, what will you give me if I translate all this stuff for you?"
"I'll give you my necklace", replied the girl. "It's real silver and diamonique".
The little man took the necklace immediately, sat himself down at the computer and looked at the first document. His fingers moved across the keyboard in a dazzling blur and in no time at all the printer was churning out a brilliantly concise, but simply worded version of events that answered all of the Prime Minister’s needs. The little man continued working on the documents for the entire day until, with just five minutes left before the government official returned, he finished the last of them.
At five o'clock, and not a minute before or after, the official returned to the room in the company of the great politician. When they saw the pile of translated documents they were amazed. A few more minutes passed, during which the United Kingdom’s glorious leader read some of the newly minted papers. He was so delighted with the results that he gave Emily a small peck on the cheek and one of his renowned, election winning smiles. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he recognised a rather beautiful and useful filly when he saw one, and his thoughts turned to the Ministry of Defence, which was well known for the sheer head splitting boredom it induced in anyone stupid enough to read its papers. The lobbyist's daughter was told to report to the Chief Secretary at the Ministry of Defence the next morning.
At nine o'clock Emily was shown into an even bigger room than the one she had been in the day before. Around her were stacked nearly one hundred manuals, status reports, intelligence briefings and detailed planning exercises designed to cater for any military emergency. Once again the official in charge told her that she had just one working day to précis all of this stuff and turn it into something intelligible to the leader of the nation’s government.
The young woman leafed through a manual describing the operation of the army's new standard assault rifle and began to sob. "What the hell is a slide bolt release widget?" she muttered, as her tears fell onto the brightly buffed parquet flooring.
There was a brief, peremptory knock on the door and with a flourish the small, bald man entered the room. This morning he was wearing a grey two-piece suit, betrayed in its modernity by the fact that the trousers were bell-bottomed flairs. The little man looked like he was drowning in the thing, the suit being at least two sizes too tall for him.
"So, young lady, what'll you give me if I spin this load of old tripe into something more coherent?"
"You can have my ring", replied the young woman. "It's real gold and has faux elvish writing on the inside".
The little man grinned at her, sat down at the computer and once again worked his magic, turning every one of the unintelligible documents into something resembling a primary school reading book.
"It's best to keep it simple if the Old Man is involved", he said as the final piece of paper emerged from the bowels of the printer.
Having collated and filed the last of the documents, the wee bald man slipped out of the door just in time to avoid the returning government official.
The great politician was so pleased with the results of the young woman's labour that he almost skipped around his office. In fact he was so delighted by it all that he demanded that she return the very next morning to work her way through an ocean of Treasury figures and policy documents. After all, he'd been in office for three years and he still didn't have a clue about the nature of the fiscal policy that his government was pursuing.
As requested, Emily presented herself at the gates of Her Majesty’s Treasury the next morning. She was quickly ushered into the biggest office yet, where, emerging from the shadows, the Prime Minister took her hand and whispered, "Pull this one off, my love, and not only will your dear old Dad become my personal press secretary, but I'll bloody well marry you!"
Emily waited for the sound of footsteps on cold marble to recede. This time she didn't bother to open the documents or to read their contents, but instead she pulled half an onion out of her pocket and made herself cry, adding some loud gulps and sniffs just for good measure. As usual there was a rap on the door and in came the little man.
He'd obviously had difficulty with yesterday’s oversize suit, so he'd made sure his clothes fitted him perfectly this morning. However, the combination of a loud plaid jacket, a striped shirt, tartan golfing trousers and white loafers somehow missed the sartorial target he'd been aiming for. He took his sunglasses off before he spoke.
"You now the drill, love"
"But I haven't got anything left to give you", said Emily, trying to look as sad and forlorn as she could. "My dad's just a poor lobbyist and you've already got all my dear departed Mum's jewelery".
"Then you'll have to promise me that when you’re married to old jug ears you'll pass on a few snippets of information. You know the sort of thing; tips on cabinet reshuffles, early sight of government policy, juicy titbits about personality squabbles and all that jazz".
Emily decided that discretion was required in such matters, and once she was the first lady of the country then who knew what might happen. She promised the little man what he wanted and sat back to work on her nails while he converted every last scrap of paper in the room into a layman's guide to the country's tax and spend financial regime.
Within a year Emily and the great politician were married. Her father's new role as the Prime Minister’s personal press secretary largely consisted of lunches with some of his old lobby friends and off the record briefings with favoured newspaper hacks, so all in all everyone was very happy. Emily didn't give another thought to the small, bald man until one day he suddenly appeared in her boudoir at Number Ten, Downing Street.
"Got anything for me, then?" he asked.
"And what if I say no", Emily replied brusquely.
"Then I tell him it was your Dad who inadvertently leaked the stuff about the pensions crisis to the press. Might mean an end to those lunches..."
The first lady suddenly realised how dangerous this little man might be and became extremely worried about where this might all lead. She promised him riches, a knighthood and a lucrative position as Chief Executive of a non-governmental organisation, but he was having none of it.
"No, I want gossip. Nice, fat, juicy gossip. That's what you promised me and that's what I'm going to have".
Emily began to cry and sob and wail so much that the little man decided to give her three days to come up with the goods just so that she would shut up. The last thing he needed was the secret service asking awkward questions about how he'd found his way into her bedroom, and, if he was being entirely honest with himself, he found Emily quite enchanting to be around. He felt sorry for her. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the outer layers of his hard-bitten, bottle-nosed hide, he still had a heart.
"Tell, you what", he said, "if you can guess what my job is in the next three days, I'll leave you alone forever more".
Emily spent the whole of the next night compiling a list of every possible job title that might exist in the world of newspapers, television and radio. When the little man arrived the next morning she tried everything she could think of but it was all to no avail. He was not an editor, nor was he a hack, nor was he a plague of boils on the bottom of mankind.
The next night the first lady studied the shadow cabinet posts of all of the opposition parties in the country's parliament. When the little man came to her again she called him many things, including leader of the opposition, shadow trade secretary and old weasel features, but not one of these job titles were correct.
In desperation the first lady finally consulted one of her husband's aides and asked him to go onto the Internet and find out the names and job titles of every single spy in the world. It was a long job and the aide didn't return until early the next morning.
"I'm sorry, ma'am", he said, "but I haven't been able to find out the names or job titles of any spies. Apparently they're all secret".
"Bugger", said Emily, pulling a large foolscap folder from under her mattress. She leafed wistfully through a couple of pages listing all of the extra marital affairs that her husband's cabinet ministers had been involved in since taking office. She supposed this would have to do.
"I did see one strange thing though, ma'am", continued the aide. "As I was walking through the civil service quadrangle this morning I saw a strangely dressed little man doing an odd sort of jig and singing a weird song. He was hopping up and down like a madman and crying:
I've got juicy gossip,
My diary's going to be full,
No more Mister Nice Guy
Now I've got all the bull!
“When he started singing I recognised him immediately.”, continued the functionary. “Bullingdon Minor. We went to prep school together. Strange behaviour, I thought, for a man on the Arts Council. Then again, perhaps not. Those artistic coves are all a bit doolally.”
Emily could taste the pure, unadulterated delights of victory.
“So what exactly does he do? For a job, I mean”, She asked.
“Oh, erm, he’s the council secretary, I think. Pushes paper around mostly, writes communiqués, that sort of thing.”
Emily was over the moon when she heard that her tormentor was one her husband's more obscure minions, at least that was how she thought of all and any public servants. With the help of her husband’s aide she checked the government lists and sure enough in the Arts and Heritage Year Book there was a picture of the horrid and slimy toad.
The little man came to call later that morning and asked the first lady, "Well, what's my job, then?"
Emily thought for a moment or two and replied, "Are you a janitor?"
"No".
"Are you a nuclear physicist?"
"Ha, no! One more guess…"
"Well, then, you must be the Secretary to the Arts Council".
"You bastard", screamed the red faced little man. "Someone's sneaked on me, haven't they? How can I publish my diaries now?"
In his rage he stamped and stomped on the floor with so much force and spite that his left foot sank right through it and he fell through the rafters all the way up to his waist. Then, in an absolute fury of passion and anger, he seized his right foot with both of his hands and tore himself in two.
Emily called down for maid service and quietly slid her dossier on ministers caught in flagrante delicto back underneath her mattress. As she did so she made a mental note to slip out to the shops later that afternoon so that she could buy a nice new foolscap diary.