As a former reality television star myself, a few tips for Jacob Rees-Mogg...

He's reportedly starring in a new TV show and I have some advice

Went quite long on eyeliner in those days. And fake tan.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is doing a reality show. It’s been reported that the former MP for North East Somerset has been signed up by Discovery+ to make a ‘fly-on-the-wall documentary that is expected to offer an insight into his personal life.’

‘It is very flattering. I am thinking about it,’ the Mogg told The Sun last month, but cameras have already been following him. Where Molly Mae Hague and Gemma Collins have gone before, so now does Jacob-Rees Mogg follow. Will he be sponsored by Boohoo or eBay? Does Boohoo even do double-breasted suits? We’ll all have to wait and see.

So, I thought I’d offer a few tips because I was once in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It was a three-part series on Tatler that aired on the BBC a decade ago, and it was called Posh People. Do you remember that? Lots of behind-the-scenes footage of the Tatler office and discussions about how one should eat a pear and caviar. (Not together, don’t be so disgusting. You eat a pear with a spoon, and caviar off the small pad of flesh at the bottom of the thumb on your left hand. You think I’m joking. Look, HERE’S the clip from the show.) I thought the series was quite good myself, but the single review on IMDB is titled ‘Pointless Documentary About A Vanishing Breed’, so there’s no pleasing some.

Cameras followed us for about six months and I was reluctant to be involved at first because posh people are largely awful on telly. I have a silly name, and some people think I sound like a newsreader from the war, and I didn’t want to be a laughing stock. A couple of media coaches came into the Vogue House boardroom to school us all before filming started and I told them I didn’t want to be involved because I was nervous about all this. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ they said soothingly, ‘just be yourself.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m worried about,’ I replied.

Anyway, after a few weeks of umming and aahing, the director and producer took me out for a long lunch and somehow I was persuaded, and I had a great time, in the end. But I learned a thing or two during the six months of filming that I want to pass on for Jacob’s benefit. Here goes:

1. Jacob, do remember to turn your mic off before going to the bathroom. Poor old Martin the cameraman. Every morning, I’d be mic-ed up with a little battery pack clipped on to the back of my skirt and a line that dangled down my shirt like a fishing wire, and every day I’d skip gaily to the loo during a break in filming, and forget entirely that Martin could hear everything in his earphones.

2. Don’t chew gum on camera. This may be unlikely in your case, Jacob, but there’s a scene in one episode of Posh People where I’m talking about Scotland ahead of the independence referendum because I was about to head north to interview various Scottish toffs about the situation. Unfortunately, this hard-hitting political scene is let down by the fact that I’m chewing gum like a bored teenager in a maths class. Horrid. Pop your gum in the bin before the cameras start rolling.

3. Don’t wear pearls, either. Again, Jacob, perhaps unlikely. But I seem to have been going through a pearl phase during the filming of the documentary and I think it was supposed to be ironic but the overall effect is a bit Hyacinth Bucket.

4. On no account refer to a chocolate Labrador as a brown Labrador. I didn’t know, ahead of filming, that calling them brown was technically incorrect, but after the episode in which I confused my Labrador colours aired we genuinely received letters in the office grumbling that I’d got it wrong. I still think about those letters sometimes. Labradors that colour are supposed to be called ‘chocolate Labradors.’ Please don’t embarrass yourself in the same way.

5. Don’t even think about bicycling on screen. To illustrate that I was a normal commuter who arrived at the office every day like everyone else instead of, say, by Rolls Royce or on a pony, they filmed me cycling into Vogue House one morning. There I wheel, in front of the Albert memorial, crouched self-consciously over my handlebars like a child who’s only just learned to bike without stabilisers. I look ridiculous. I’m not sure if you have a bike, Jacob. Perhaps a Penny Farthing? I would leave it in the shed.

6. Try not to have a meltdown on camera. During the Scottish episode, I had a slight personal drama when an ex-boyfriend flew up to the hotel to surprise me. We’d recently broken up but the break-up was dragging on a bit, so he flew up to try and convince me to get back together. I was due to visit Mohamed Al-Fayed’s castle a couple of days later and had a teary meltdown about the situation in the car with the director and the cameraman. ‘You’re not filming this are you?’ I sobbed, as we motored away from Mohamed’s castle. Christ, that was a weird morning. ‘No,’ Barnaby the director promised, although he later told me this was a fib. Luckily, none of that drama made it through to the final edit. But I still think safer to keep any personal life dramas off-screen, Jacob.

7. Don’t let it all go to your head. After the series went out, I was stopped a few times in the street and also in a Pret once, I vaguely remember. ‘Are you the one that was in the documentary?’ they would generally ask. ‘I am,’ I would reply nervously, in case they were about to berate me for calling a Labrador the wrong colour, but they were all lovely and complimentary about my performance, despite the pearls and the chewing gum. I could quite see how this kind of thing could puff up the old ego. Try and stay level-headed, Jacob. Remain a man of the people.

If anyone fancies watching Posh People (go on, it’s a laugh) I think you can find all the episodes on YouTube. HERE’s the first one. And I hope these tips help, Jacob. Nothing to worry about, really. Just remember to be yourself.

Picture of the week

An older sibling looking at the new baby and thinking ‘How long’s he staying?’

Look, I know I said no more dog pictures this week, and I am conscious of not becoming that person who constantly posts pictures of their dog as if everyone else thinks he’s as adorable as I do, but every time I stick a story of Dennis up on Instagram various people say ‘MORE DENNIS PLEASE.’ (I haven’t told him this because I don’t want it to go to his head.) So here we go. More Dennis.

It was a big weekend because I took him down to Sussex to meet Beano, Mum’s Parson terrier. Would they get on? Would Beano eat Dennis? Actually, after a slightly dicery first half an hour where Beano excitably jumped around and barked and looked as if he did think Dennis might be a delicious canapé, they settled down together like, well, uncle and small nephew. In fact Beano, who I think it’s fair to say can be quite a naughty, energetic, noisy terrier, adopted the air of an elder statesman teaching the young apprentice a thing or two. There was the odd moment that even felt quite Attenborough - in the garden on Sunday morning, Beano stretched his front legs out and stuck his bottom in the air behind him, almost as if doing downward dog, and Dennis studied this performance with interest before trying to do the same, copying the big boy. It was incredibly sweet.

And that’s quite enough about dogs for this week.

Recommendation of the week

THIS £12 champagne from Sainsbury’s. Alright technically it’s not champagne. It’s fizzy wine from South Africa. Or as they call it down there, Method Cap Classique or ‘MCC’ for short. But’s it’s basically champagne. South African champagne. Just like cava is Spanish ‘champagne’. Both this South African stuff and cava are made in the same way as champagne and taste (to me) exactly the same - crisp and delicious and pretty perfect when served with a bowl of Co-Op salt and vinegar crisps.

I find champagne snobbery, like wine snobbery, extreeeeeeeemely boring and why spend £50+ on something that calls itself champagne simply because it’s from that specific region of France, when you can get great cremant/cava/MCC etc elsewhere for a fraction of the cost? Alright, Ruinart blanc de blanc is very lovely, but it’s also wildly expensive. I am a (bit of a) snob about prosecco because that is different. Prosecco has added sugar, which makes it too sweet and sickly. Plus all those ‘prosecco o’clock’ signs or fridge magnets that some people choose to have in their kitchens make me a bit 😬😬😬

Anyway, I’ve bought Graham Beck from Majestic before, but last week I realised I could get it in my Sainsbury’s so I thought I should pass this exciting news on. The new Labour government is coming through already.

Prison, immediately.

Nonsense of the week

No beef with Jeremy Clarkson. As I wrote here a couple of months ago, I was the last person in the country to watch him larking about on tractors on Clarkson’s Farm and I liked the show very much. However, what I’m thinking is…does the Cotswolds need another pub? He’s bought one, reportedly for £1m, and Clarkson’s Pub will presumably be the next series of his Amazon show, covering the ups and downs of JC becoming a publican, pulling terrible pints, struggling to find a chef and refusing to serve Coca Cola. He’s said that already, by the way - his pub won’t serve coke or coffee. It’s going to have fires and dogs and serve proper plates of gammon and chips, and everything served in it is going to come from Britain. Lovely. Splendid. Excellent etc.

My only teeny tiny query is: does that area need another pub when there are already 642 pubs nearby that serve artisanal scotch eggs? I wrote a piece recently about how I embarrassed myself in those parts last December. It was the first time that Paul and I were going away together and I wanted it to be perfect. Somewhere lovely and comfortable, with a big bath and great food where we could loll around all day, play a bit of backgammon, go for a walk if we could be bothered. So I booked a place called The Bull which I’d heard and read about recently. Trendy new Cotswold pub. Presumably lovely sheets and a nice breakfast. Just the ticket.

So we drove to The Bull one weekend last December, together with the backgammon board we’d decided to bring on the basis that the pub might be so trendy it didn’t even have a backgammon board, and walked in. Walking into The Bull felt like strolling into a trendy East London pub - quite a few beards, a well-known actor in one corner, several beanies worn in that ironic, slouchy way (perched on top of the head like a tea cosy that’s too small).

‘Hello, I’ve got a reservation for a couple of nights,’ I told someone holding an iPad, before giving them my name.

Long story short, after the manager spent several minutes tapping at his iPad, frowned and checked the spelling of my name several times, he still couldn’t find the booking, so he offered us a seat at the bar while he tried to sort it out. I was quite huffy by this point. It didn’t look cool, arriving in this trendy pub for the first weekend away with my new boyfriend, only to be left standing there like a lemon. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I told Paul defensively. Paul was still clutching on to the backgammon board, at this point, and we were standing in the middle of this pub, beanies and beards all around us, weighed down with our overnight bags. It didn’t feel that slick.

A few minutes later, the manager came back over with an uncomfortable expression on his face, the sort of expression you might make if you urgently needed the loo in a crowded place. He crouched down beside my chair and said, quite quietly, ‘Madam, do you think you might have booked The Bull in Burford?’

Turns out, I’d booked a different Bull in a different town ten minutes or so away. Which was quite embarrassing, particularly because we then had to traipse out of the pub again with our bags and the sodding backgammon board.

‘It’s alright. You could also have booked The Bell,’ the manager joked before we left, because obviously there’s not only The Bull in Charlbury (run by the guys behind The Pelican in Notting Hill), and The Bull in Burford (Matthew Freud’s pub), but also The Bell in Charlbury (Lady Bamford’s new one). You see the problem? It’s very confusing. And that’s on top of others like The Lamb, The Swan, The Wild Rabbit, The Fox and The Boa Constrictor (I made the last one up) all in the same area. And all those in addition to the likes of Soho Farmhouse and Estelle Manor down there too.

So, all I’m saying is, given that 29 pubs are closing a week in the UK, do The Cotswolds reeeeeally need another pub? Isn’t it a bit selfish to horde them all there? No word on what Clarkson’s calling his pub yet, but given the candles that he sold in his farm shop, I suspect it won’t be yet another Bull…

Jeremy’s candles