Alec Douglas-Home

To give you one more, the second person on that list, so we got a prince at number one.

The second on the list is Alec Home of the Hirsel, AKA Sir Alec Douglas-Home, AKA Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home, AKA Baron Home of the Hirsel and Coldstream, AKA Lord Dunglass.

Nice.

Oh, the best.

But I was equally aware, Michael, of people who had not only faced up to it, but moved way beyond.

For example, when I first met Alec Douglas-Home as Foreign Secretary, I was shaking, and I went to the Foreign Office and sat down to see him on a private matter concerning a constituent, and he treated me, I know this makes one laugh now, he treated me, this 29-year-old child, as an equal.

And it was no bluffing, and it was no cleverness.

He treated me as an equal.

No.

No. "I'll have to raise my game if I hope to get this girl." And I thought, "Wow, you have fallen plonk." That sentence for me, and I've remembered it all these years later, "I'll have to raise my game." I thought, "Wow, you're besotted."

You've worked with ministers both during Margaret Thatcher and John Major's premiership, and as you pointed out, you met Alec Douglas-Home when you first entered the House of Commons.

Of all the ministers that you've seen, who impressed you most in the Thatcher and Major years?

Um, uh, because of, because of being in the European Union, they had a guaranteed supply coming from Europe as a, as a backstop, and that has particularly impacted fresh goods, so, uh, fruit, vegetables, and, um, uh, salads.

But it really began in 1964 when the conservatives of the day, um, Alec Douglas-Home, un- uh, under pressure from Tesco, Michael Cohen, they, they got rid of a thing called resale price maintenance And that gave the supermarkets, uh, and the, the big companies, the big corporations, the ability to pay under the price of production.

So RPM protected the prices, the farm gate prices, and so that is why we have seen supermarket growth in this country very concentrated in a few hands, and cheap food policy basically strip our high streets and independent stores.

So that, that trajectory has been going along all the time.

Mm.

There's no Alec Douglas-Humes in this story.

It's all Doug- [laughs]

It's all Alec Douglas.