Q How much are you worth?

A 'I'm not prepared to answer that question.'

Q How much were you worth when you were twelve?


A 'I'm afraid you'll have to look that up in your file of cuttings.'

Jacob Rees-Mogg is sixteen, a schoolboy at Eton. He is the second son of Sir William, the last editor of The Times before Rupert Murdoch bought it, and that is one reason why he is familiar with the phrase 'file of cuttings'. Another reason is that he - Jacob - has one. A file of cuttings. Few sixteen-year-olds have these. (Boris Becker? Amy Carter? Jade Jagger?)

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Jacob Rees-Mogg gained his first column inches at the age of eleven. He attended a shareholder's meeting of Lonrho, in which he held (at the time) 340 shares. At the meeting he 'quizzed' the chairman Lord Duncan-Sandys about the mingy dividend that Lonrho shareholders were being offered. Many newspapers (not The Times) reported that Lord Duncan-Sandys suffered discomfiture at being 'quizzed' by an eleven-year-old.

Later in 1981, when Jacob Rees-Mogg was twelve, he attended a shareholders' meeting of GEC, in which he held (at the time) 175 shares, and he told the chairman Lord Nelson that the dividend on offer was 'pathetic'. This time the incident was more widely reported, partly because Rees-Mogg père had himself joined the board of GEC only minutes before Rees-Mogg fils started slagging off the chairman of the company, and partly because amused City editors had by now cued in their warmer-hearted, human-interest, star-columnist brethren. The schoolboy financier was a gift to such as these. Twelve-year-old worth £3,500! Jacob was photographed looking heart-breakingly young with huge brown eyes and set upon by the likes of Jean Rook, who wrote that her grizzled old heart melted clean away when Rees-Mogg turned his eyes upon her. It makes unpleasant reading, this sort of stuff.


So here it is, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Personality. City Whizz-Kid. Schoolboy Financier.

I knocked smartly at the door of his father's Smith Square house and was wildly disconcerted to see a pair of huge brown eyes at waist level peering through the letter box. I'd rather hoped he wasn't going to be a midget as well.

He wasn't. He opened the door and said with great formality, Hallo. Do Come in. Would you like to go upstairs. I pointed to the waist-high huge brown eyes and asked 'Who is this sweet tot?' in an informal chatty way, and he responded, with great formality, that it was his sister Annunciata, that he spelled Annunziata with a Z as was proper, its being an Italian name, but that his mother, he was afraid, spelled it with a C and that we should all just have to wait until Annunciata herself grew up a little and made the decision on how it should be spelled.

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He showed me into the blue drawing-room of his father's Smith Square house. Inside, the lamps were lit although fierce sunshine burned outside, because Smith Square houses are rather dark, and we chatted about the sort of things he's normally interviewed about. It wasn't what you'd call a light-hearted chat.


Q How old are you, exactly?

A 'I am to the day exactly one hundred and fifty years older than Queen Victoria'

Q Wouldn't you rather be at a Catholic school?

A 'Eton, although not a Catholic School, is of course a Catholic foundation dating from the fifteenth century and Catholics are rather well catered for. There is Mass every morning at 7.30 for those Catholics who are prepared to attend it, and on Sundays at ten forty-five.'

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Jacob has been interviewed so often that he thinks he's learned the trick of it. He wore a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt, black brogues. He speaks sonorously and in paragraphs, nodding away like a Latin master and employing old-man's tricks like peering over the top of one's horn-rims and putting the tips of one's fingers together.

Q Do you always wear a suit?

A 'Oh, yes. Occasionally I wear a blazer and flannels.'

Sometimes Jacob over-acted during our chat.

Q Do you have a girlfriend?

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A 'What a QUESTION! Plenty of time for THAT sort of thing later on!'

This said with a roguish roll of the eye. Me: Oh, come on. He: Ask me again when I'm 30!

Sometimes he forgot to act at all, and one's grizzled old heart melted clean away.

Q Is your father home?

A 'No, there's no one home except myself. And Annunciata and Nanny.'

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I asked about extra-curricular activities at Eton. He said predictably and with a smirk. 'I'm not a very sporty person I'm afraid,' so we got that one well out of the way, and then he told me about the Stockton Society, which he has founded. 'Basically it's a political society that's meant to be Conservative. Not a debating society, no. We have meetings and invite speakers down to talk to us.' (Loses schoolmasterly self-control) 'Well, that's the idea, anyway. We haven't been going long, actually. And, actually, we haven't had many speakers yet.'

(I said: Have Jeffrey Archer! Jeffrey Archer goes everywhere. Write to him, he's BOUND to come, especially now.) 'Well, I have actually just invited Jeffrey Archer, in fact. (Did you ask him before or after The Appointment?) 'After. I popped a letter in the post to him the very next morning, actually.' (Well, he's BOUND to come.) 'Oh, I do hope so. Actually, we haven't had much success at all with speakers so far. In fact, nobody's come at all yet. Though, as I say, we haven't been going long.' (God, that's terrible! Ask Edwina Currie! She'll go anywhere, I bet she'd love to be asked to Eton.) 'I don't think I know her.' (North country-woman! Publicity-mad! VERY right-wing back bencher, hanger and flogger-) 'Oh, I say. D'you mind if I make a note of her name? she sounds just my type.'

I asked him if he'd read any of Jeffrey Archer's ghastly books. He said he'd read Kane and Abel and though there were 'some most unsuitable bits', he thought it was wonderful. He said he'd stayed up till six in the morning to finish First Among Equals. He hasn't read Adrian Mole, only heard bits 'on the wireless'. He enjoys P.G. Wodehouse the most. He said he no longer read the Mail ('Far too left-wing!'), misses the FT every Sunday morning and enjoys Dallas. He said Panorama drove him dotty, World in Action was sometimes 'interesting', but the current affairs programme he liked very best was Newsnight. Newsnight, he helpfully told me, was in-depth and analytical and grown-up and intelligent.

I said, 'And leftie.' He said; No! I said, Yes, oh yes, didn't he know? About how Newsnight had called the Argentinians 'The Argentinians' during the Falklands War, and they'd called the British 'The British' instead of saying 'the enemy' and 'our boys' and how flaming mad Mrs Thatcher had been? And made her displeasure known very clearly in the House next day? 'Certain BBC programmes, ' she'd said? Disloyalty? Lack of Patriotism? Didn't he know? He didn't know. He was crestfallen. He said 'Well, I used to like Newsnight. I liked it the best.' It was time for me to go.


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