Excitement mounts ahead of Vince Cable's 'Audience with' debut

THE INDEPENDENT Pandora 18 February 2009
Cable is plugged in for stage show
While government ministers and banking executives feature at the top of most people’s current hit-lists, the Liberal Democrats’ very rational Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, can seemingly do no wrong.
Cable’s measured approach to the economic meltdown has made him a popular choice to be Chancellor in a potential coalition government. So immune has he become from the public’s bile that the |theatre impresario Clive Conway has booked him to appear in a series of one-man shows.
Cable will make his debut appearance at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford next month with a 45-minute talk about the state of the economy, as well as more general musings about his “life and times”. Afterwards, I’m told, the audience will be given the chance to pose direct questions. “It is rather like a reinvention of the public meeting,” explains Conway. “I had thought about approaching him for some time. Then he did his Desert Island Discs show, which was great and everyone was talking about him, so we invited him to do it and he accepted.”
If it goes well, Cable’s talk could be the first of many. Though no firm plans exist as yet, I’m told |he is keen to |continue once the economy has calmed down and “he’s not so busy”.

DAILY EXPRESS VINCE CHARMING 19 February 2009
By Anna Pukas

Vincent Cable is that very rare breed - a politician who people respect. But there's a lot more to the man who warned of the credit crunch years before it happened, including a passion for ballroom dancing and a father who once disowned him
AT FIRST sight, you have to wonder what on earth the manager of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford thought he was doing, giving the place over to some baldy chap so he can spend a couple of hours spouting on about the state of the economy. Frankly, it does not sound like a rip-roaring night out. But when the bald chap in question is Vince Cable, people stop yawning and start asking about getting a ticket.
The man who is the MP for Twickenham, the Lib Dems' Treasury spokesperson and deputy leader of the party, is well worth listening to, as many of his fellow MPs of all political persuasions would admit - and not even under duress.
The Shadow Leader of the Commons, Alan Duncan, has called him "the holy grail of economic comment these days". When Cable goes on Newsnight, he does not get monstered by Jeremy Paxman. There is even an appreciation society on Facebook called Cable So Able, whose mission statement is simply "to thank Vince Cable". It has 672 members, most of whom believe that the Liberal Democrat party should loan him out to be Gordon Brown's Chancellor.
If more people had taken more notice of Vince Cable all those other times he was spouting on about the economy, we might not be in such a big mess now. In 2003, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were boasting that they had broken the cycle of boom and bust for ever, Cable was warning of the dangers of an overheated housing market and high personal debt. Brown & co swatted him away as if he were a fly contaminating the icing on a fondant fancy.
Cable said demutualising building societies (turning them into banks, which are owned by shareholders rather than members, and floating them on the Stock Market) was a mistake. They dismissed him as a lone voice in the wilderness, like Ben Gunn in Treasure Island, chuntering on about cheese. When Northern Rock collapsed, Cable said it should be nationalised. Chancellor Alistair Darling said he was talking tosh, then did precisely that some months later.
You have to admire a man who not only knows what he's talking about but is subsequently shown to have known what he was talking about.
You have to admire him even more for being witty with it. Cable produced the best political quip for years when he said of Brown: "The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean."
And you can't help warming to a politician who claims to be most inspired not by some great statesman or legislator but by the humble bee.
"Bees show that some creatures are unselfish and public spirited. They make things grow for no personal gain, " says Cable.
Oh, and to cap it all, the man can dance - well enough to pass international Supreme Award Two in ballroom dancing and well enough to charm Alesha Dixon, winner of Strictly Come Dancing 2007 - and he is a genuine, unabashed romantic.
When he appeared on Desert Island Discs, he told host Kirsty Young that he wears two wedding rings in honour of his two "very happy" marriages.
That's about 80 per cent of the female vote sewn up right there.
Last year, he was Citizens Advice Bureau's parliamentarian of the year and The House magazine's opposition politician of the year.
All of which led impresario Clive Conway to book the MP for An Audience With Vince Cable on April 14. It is for one night only and there will be 45 minutes to an hour of speech, followed by audience questions. "It's rather like a reinvention of the public meeting, " says Conway. If all goes well, there could be more audiences in more theatres, in the manner of Tony Benn, whose meet-the-people shows sell out regularly.
And there is every indication that Cable will go down well, for despite having neither youth nor arresting looks on his side (he is 65 and looks rather like the actor Julian Fellowes), Dr Vince Cable has managed to pull off the cleverest trick of all: to be a politician and to be genuinely liked and respected, all at the same time.
How has he done it?
I T HELPS, certainly, that unlike many New Labourites or the Tory "Cameroons", he has had a life outside politics. A grammar-school boy from York, he studied natural sciences and economics at Cambridge. As an economics expert in the Seventies, he became an adviser to Labour leader John Smith when he was Industry Secretary. In 1995, he was appointed chief economist at Shell. He can be said to have a good understanding of how a business works and of the wider economic picture, and of how the former is affected by the latter.
Luck undoubtedly plays a big part in any success but luck has cruelly deserted Vince Cable at crucial points in his life. He had been interested in politics since student days but it took five attempts to get into the Commons; he finally achieved this in 1997, winning Twickenham for the Lib Dems when he was 54, which is nowadays considered positively geriatric for a newcomer. Then his first wife, Olympia, who was thought to have overcome breast cancer, was stricken again by a more virulent form. Cable looked after her for seven years, pumping air into her lungs up to four times a day as she deteriorated, while still trying to be a diligent MP.
Olympia was a Kenyan Asian, whose family came from Goa in India. Cable met her when she was studying in York. They met again when he was posted to Kenya as a 23-year-old Cambridge economics graduate to advise the government and married against the wishes of both sets of parents. Olympia's parents had another husband lined up for her while Cable's Tory-voting father John - a joiner who had progressed into teaching at a technical college - was, to put it bluntly, something of a bigot.
Cable recalls: "He said a mixed marriage would fail and that it would outrage the neighbours."
Though neither he nor Olympia was religious, he says they chose to exchange vows in the august setting of the Catholic cathedral in Nairobi.
"It was our way of expressing our unity against the world."
T HEY moved to Glasgow, where Cable studied for a doctorate and lectured, and had three children - Paul, Aida and Hugo. For several years, Cable barely spoke to his parents. Then John suddenly got in touch, asking to see them.
"I think he was curious to know what was happening. My father ended up closer to Olympia than to his own wife, my mother. It was a remarkable transformation."
It was Olympia who suggested to her husband that they take up ballroom dancing as a joint activity.
Before long, they were taking - and passing - medal exams (he is the equivalent standard of a grade eight music student, which is to say, very good indeed).
Dancing has remained a constant in Cable's life and almost nothing is allowed to intrude on his twiceweekly practice sessions at the Kelly Dancing School in Twickenham.
When he and Alesha Dixon did a quickstep, those in the know said he was actually the better dancer.
Olympia died a few days after the 2001 general election. She had been bedridden for the last two years.
Cable describes those "terrible, dreadful days" as the worst time of his life.
The heartbroken widower threw himself into his work, attending any and every engagement to which he was asked.
At one meeting on Third World development, held in the New Forest, he got into an argument with a woman in the audience, local farmer and divorcée Rachel Smith, and he agreed to visit her farm in order to better understand her problems.
They married in 2004.
Rachel has taken up ballroom dancing, while her husband has joined her in her hobby, horse riding. He is, he says, a firm believer in having a rounded life.
Of course, with no end to the economic crisis in sight, the Vince Cable Roadshow may have to be put on ice.
Meanwhile, book early for Guildford to avoid disappointment.