Broad Sheep exclusive
Secret transcript of HMQ’s telephone call to the Health Secretary
HMQ Good morning. Is one addressing Mr Matthew Hancock? Hancock Who’s speaking please? HMQ Your Sovereign. Hancock My what? HMQ I am The Queen. Calling you from Windsor Castle. At Mr Johnson’s suggestion. Hancock [springs to attention, knocking over his chair in the process] Good morning Your Majesty. HMQ I think we met briefly when you were enrolled as a Privy Councillor. Hancock I remember the occasion vividly, Ma’am. HMQ Mam. Hancock I’m sorry? HMQ It’s Mam as in ‘ham’, please. I want to talk to you about the requisitioning of the ExCel arena in Docklands as a Coronavirus Emergency Centre. An inspired idea if I may say so. Hancock Why, thank you, Your Majesty. HMQ Was it your idea? Hancock Err no, Mam; it was suggested by one of Dominic Cumming’s new recruits. HMQ One of his ‘weirdo misfits’? Hancock Indeed. Last week we had an Endemic brain-storming session at Number 10 and… HMQ It’s a PANdemic, Mr Hancock. Endemic is an adjective meaning ‘commonly found in particular regions.’ Hancock I do apologise, Your Majesty. HMQ As soon as you are out of self-isolation I want you and your officials to consider extending the new Covid-19 Compulsory Requisitioning Order, which that nice Mr Rees-Mogg has just had enacted. Hancock Certainly, Mam. Extending it to some other buildings, you mean? HMQ Precisely. Three in fact. Will you write these down please? Hancock [reaching for a notepad and pencil] Ready, when you are, Your Majesty.
HMQ The Shard, The Dorchester and that dreadful City office block they christened The Cheese Grater. Mr Johnson has assured me that with a three-line whip they could all be NHS property by Easter. Hancock May I ask why these three buildings have been singled out by Your Majesty? HMQ Simples. The Shard offends our view westwards from the gardens at the Palace, when one is walking the corgis. It’s virtually unoccupied. One of my more indiscreet footmen was heard describing it to a colleague as an ‘up-market Chinese Knocking Shop’. And the operators of The Dorchester are tiresome Arabic parvenues who keep winning classic horse races. Andrew did want me to add Winfield House in Regent’s Park, but I’m advised that, territorially, it’s on American soil. Hancock I’m told that the designer of the third building, The Cheese Grater - Lord Rogers, who you yourself ennobled in 1996, Your Majesty – has his UK offices in that building. HMQ [snaps] All the better. Charles can’t abide him. Hancock May I ask, Mam: will Mr Rees-Mogg’s extended Bill include compensation for the owners of these additional requisitioned buildings? At the end of the Endemic? HMQ It’s a PANdemic, Mr Hancock! Hancock I do apologise, Ma’am… I mean Mam. At the end of the pandemic. HMQ Mr Johnson tells me that young Mr Sunak – supported by the new Governor of my Bank is suggesting currently-prevailing RPI minus 85%. Hancock [hastily checks his phone’s calculator] So… really not very much at all? HMQ ‘The Square Root of Fuck All’, as my dear old nanny Crawfie used to say, when Father told her what her annual wage rise would be during the war. Castle Mole