Yet few people can have done more to promote private education in Britain, however unintentionally. His Jennings stories (four of which have just come out in a new compendium edition by Carlton Books), must have encouraged scores of young boys to persuade their parents to send them to boarding schools.

One of my proudest scoops as a journalist was to track him down about a dozen years ago. I had got to know Anthony Buckeridge through my daughter's love of the Jennings stories (following on from my own interest as a child).

Anthony told me that the model for the stories was a boy called Dairmaid Jennings at his school, Seaford College, where they were schoolboys together in the 1920s, and where Dairmaid was always getting into scrapes.

But Anthony had no idea what had happened to Dairmaid in later life.

I was determined to track him down, and found he was living in a nursing home in Nelson in New Zealand.

Amazingly, Dairmaid Jennings knew nothing about the Jennings stories, and that he'd been the model for a fictional character whose exploits have been read by millions, ever since Anthony Buckeridge published his first Jennings stories after the war (his last Jennings book came out in 1994).

They were turned in radio and TV series, and translated into 17 languages, but Dairmaid was ignorant of all this, partly because he'd gone to live in Australia around 1940 (and later New Zealand), and perhaps because he'd never had any children of his own.

After I'd discovered Dairmaid, he was put in touch with Anthony and they remained in contact for the last few years of the writer's life (before he died in 2004). Anthony's publishers sent Dairmaid copies of the Jennings books, which were read to him by the staff at his nursing home. He loved them.

But the Conservative leader got an excellent laugh when he pilloried Mr Brown's Government Of All The Talents - the so-called Goats - distinguished outsiders who were brought in as ministers in the Lords without ever standing for election or getting their hands dirty in politics.

But five of the Goats - Digby Jones, Mark Malloch-Brown, Stephen Vadera, Stephen Carter and Ara Dharzi - have now all left ministerial office.

"The only jobs this prime minister has created are for his cronies," said Mr Cameron, "all of whom have repaid his generosity by leaving his government at the first opportunity - but of course keeping their well-upholstered seats in the House of Lords.

"Never has so much ermine been wasted. Never have so many stoats died in vain. Never mind jobs for the boys - under this prime minister it's stoats for the goats".

It was a variation on a wonderful 17-year old joke by Michael Heseltine from back before the 1992 election, when he taunted Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and John Smith for trying to woo the financial community with a series of lunches and dinners in the City of London - what became known as the prawn cocktail offensive.

"All those prawn cocktails for nothing," Mr Heseltine told MPs. "Never have so many crustaceans died in vain. With all the authority I can command as secretary of state for the environment, let me say to the Labour leader 'save the prawns'."

Sir Jeremy showed me a couple of wonderful old paintings which portray his great great grandfather being elected a Conservative MP in 1837 and 1847, in the market square in Swaffham, where tonight's meeting takes place.

And I can also reveal - exclusively, I hope - that the walls of Sir Jeremy's loo are covered with wood-carvings of couples having sex in all sorts of different positions.

So I think we can take Sir Jeremy at his word when he says his opposition to Ms Truss is nothing to do with her sexual behaviour.

I was interested to learn how parents of children at private schools are allowed to use the vouchers to pay for boarding fees (though not tuition costs).

And several top public schools, including Ampleforth and Wellington College, encourage their parents to make use of the scheme.

What of Eton? I contacted the bursar who told me that none of their parents do so.

"Its not been suggested," he said. So they're missing a trick there then.

What surprises me is how little take-up there is. Three hundred thousand families is a very small fraction of the many millions of parents of children up to the age of 15 who might benefit.

Indeed, I suspect that many parents might not have known about the scheme until this row broke out.

So ironically Prime Minister Gordon Brown's policy may encourage a lot more people to subscribe to childcare voucher schemes, and claim tax relief while they still can.

And that, of course, would end up costing the government money in the medium term, not save it.

The trouble is that Brown calls it "iron cast" and pronounces "iron" in a rather strange way, with two syllables rather than one.

Still, we can expect Labour researchers to be busily examing past Conservative policy statements to see where else they have made "cast-iron guarantees", or "iron-cast".

Interesting to see that the Speaker John Bercow twice gave mild rebukes to Gordon Brown over straying into party politics, and Brown's later retort that he did "not always agree" with Bercow's rulings.

It is fascinating how the features of modern-day Westminster politics have permeated down to deepest Somerset.

In the small town of Somerton, where I was filming on Friday, 11 members of the 14-strong town council - all independents - have suddenly resigned their seats.

That leaves only three councillors to run the show, and one of those plans to resign as well, which technically leaves the council defunct until the town elects some more councillors.

Their official reason for this mass resignation is the the persistent campaign run by a local blogger, Niall Connolly, accusing the town council of being "riven with a culture of secrecy", a failure to keep proper records and lack of consultation.

He also called it a "tender-free-zone" in its decisions on who gets local contracts.

Yet Mr Connolly also uses colourful and aggressive language which verges on the abusive at times. And his targets have been paid MPs or ministers but part-time councillors who were, after all, only unpaid volunteers.

One councillor complains Mr Connolly accused him of being a racist. Mr Connolly himself admits he described two elderly women councillors (who do indeed look rather similar), as "the ugly sisters".

And the councillors complain that Mr Connolly's website, Muck and Brass, accuses them of being "corrupt and degenerate".

But scratch below the surface and the story gets a lot more complicated. When I heard that 122 people attended a public meeting on Tuesday evening I immediately knew that all was not happy among the citizenry of Somerton.

The broad critique, voiced by many other people in the town, is that the council is living in the past in the way it treats the public, that there is a lack of openness, transparency and accountability.

That is why Tuesday night's meeting unanimously called for a referendum on the council's plan to to move the local recycling centre.

In short, Somerton reflects in miniature important developments these days in national politics. "Somerton," says Mr Connolly, "is only Westminster writ-small."

So we have a political elite under fire from an increasingly disillusioned public who feel their rulers are out of touch.

Throw into that mix internet bloggers and our new Freedom of Information laws, and we see politics undergoing a transformation unlike anything since Thomas Paine and James Gilray in the late 18th Century developed the arts of political pamphleteering and cartooning

In the second half a long line of police appeared in front of the United end, dressed in full flourescent riot gear and helmets, and accompanied by several nasty-looking police dogs.

Many United supporters were unaware of the trouble that had occurred elsewhere at half time, and felt this sudden police display just in front of them was a gross over-reaction by the forces of law and order.

So the following response suddenly erupted from United fans:

"We pay for your hats. What a waste of council tax!" they chanted. "We pay for your hats!"

And later, a modification on that:

"We pay for your dogs. What a waste of council tax! We pay for your dogs!"

So the political debate about public spending priorities even seems to have entered the consciousness of football fans!

In the last few weeks Mr Blair's former chief of staff during his decade in Downing Street, Jonathan Powell, a former diplomat, has been doing a sterling job for his old boss, quietly co-ordinating his campaign behind the scenes, privately sounding out the 27 governments around Europe.

And, I'm sure that if Mr Blair was to win the new position Mr Powell would be line for a key post at his side in Brussels.

But this week Mr Powell is suffering from a slight distraction from the Blair effort which is rather hindering any attempt to canvass support, at least during office hours.

He's been called up for jury service.

Case A: Alan Bown gave a political party £363,697

1) It was his money
2) He had a business trading in this country, making him eligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register when he donated although he was the year before, and also the year afterwards.

Case B: Michael Brown gave a political party £2.4m
1) It was not his money, he had defrauded it
2) His business was not trading in the UK, so therefore he was ineligible to donate money
3) He was not on the electoral register; neither was he the year afterwards, nor the year before.

Do you see the difference(s)?
Well the main difference is that the Electoral Commission has doggedly pursued the Alan Bown donation, and today won an appeal forcing the party to give up the money, despite a judge previously ruling that the political party that received it had acted in good faith.

In the Michael Brown case the Electoral Commission has always maintained the political party acted in good faith and need not repay money. Although following the criminal proceedings against Mr Brown they have re-opened an investigation, it has not had yet had any result and they have not managed to say when, if ever, it will.

Oh yes there is one other difference:

This year the Political Parties and Elections Act went through Parliament, and among other things it restructured the Electoral Commission and gave it new funding and powers.

The political party in Case A, UKIP, has no MPs and only three representatives in the House of Lords (where the government has no majority and is particularly vulnerable to amendments).

The political party in Case B, the Liberal Democrats, has 63 MPs and 71 members of the House of Lords (where the Government has no majority and is particularly vulnerable to amendments).

At least those are the difference that I can see. Perhaps you can you suggest others?

"Oh yes," he said. "In my day you could simply farm all that out to your wife."

But there is also a question about the power of select committees, much championed by Mr Brown in his early days as PM.

One of the most interesting developments at Westminster this autumn will be the proposals from the committee chaired by Tony Wright on reform of the House of Commons which was set up in July.

In particular, they are chewing over an idea that has become highly fashionable in recent months - that members of Parliamentary select committees, and the committee chairmen, should all be elected by secret ballot of the whole house.

Secret ballots are now in vogue, of course, following the election of the new Speaker by that process over the summer - for the very first time.

Such a reform could hugely reduce the power of the whips - not just in ending their ability to appoint the members of select committees, whose job is to examine the work of government (in effect the government picking its own scrutineers).

It would also in reduce the whips' overall power exercised through patronage. Until now, troublesome MPs could often be brought into line with the enticement, for example, of a place on the paper clips select committee.

Mr Wright's committee is going to have to get a move on. A big issue is how to set up elections by secret ballot without granting a simple monopoly to the party which has the most MPs (and is therefore the government party).

At present the system allows for the opposition party to chair some select committees, and even the odd Lib Dem (such as Alan Beith and Phil Willis).

So Mr Wright's committee has enlisted the help of two academics from Nuffield College, Oxford - Iain Mclean, politics professor at Oxford, and Scott Moser, a young American mathematician who specialises in game theory and the politics of choice.

They are trying to devise various election systems, using clever mathematical formulae, which would share out the committee chairs and the committee memberships so as broadly to reflect the composition of the House of Commons.

Contrary to what one might think, it is a lot easier to devise a fair system to elect members of the committees secretly than it is to elect chairmen by secret ballot.

Once you have decided the proportions of each party on each committee - a ratio of 10:7:2, for example - it is fairly easy to arrange for each party's MPs then to decide by secret ballot who serves on that committee for their own party.

Much harder is how to choose committee chairs by secret ballot. How does one share out the chairmanships? Who is to decide which chairmanship should go to which party, and how precisely is that decision made?

Also, there is the problem of what to do about the smaller parties - the SNP, DUP, Plaid Cymru and so on - as well as the increasing number of independent MPs.

How do these smaller entities get their fair share of chairmanships? There is a danger they will fall victim to a stitch-up up the big three - Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

Meanwhile some Commons committee clerks fear that if chairmen are chosen by secret ballot the MPs elected to such posts may not always mesh easily with the members of the committee (also elected by secret ballot), and one could see a clash of mandates.

Some clerks fear secret ballot elections might also attract unsuitable big-name, publicity-seeking MPs to go for these increasingly high-profile posts - members who do not have a command of the subject area or the respect of the other members of the committee.

Mr Wright, who is standing down at the next election, carries a huge responsibility in his final months in Parliament.

There is a big mood in the current climate for radical reforms, and I suspect most MPs would agree in principle with the idea of secret ballots for both the chairs and members of select committees.

If Mr Wright and his colleagues get the system right then it could radically shift the balance of power between Parliament and the government, between the legislature and the executive.

The trouble is it is all being dreamt up very quickly. Prof McLean and Dr Moser plan to report to Mr Wright by the end of this month, ready for him to deliver his report in November.

OK, I admit, it's in not quite such a high-profile role. The chairman of the Devizes Conservatives, Ken Carter, tells me that Gen Jackson will be acting as their "moderator" when local members in the Wiltshire constituency meet on 1 November to choose as successor to Sir Michael Ancram as their candidate.

Gen Jackson, who lives in the constituency, in the village of Great Bedwyn, will in effect chair the selection meeting, which is likely to be hotly contested, since it is a safe seat (with a majority of 13,194).

Mr Carter doesn't know if Gen Jackson is a member of the Conservative party, but the question surely now arises as to whether Sir Mike is about to follow Gen Dannatt and come out in support of Mr Cameron and his team.

I think it most unlikely, however, that Gen Jackson will follow Gen Dannatt and back the Conservatives quite so publicly as he did, since he was very unhappy about the way Gen Dannatt behaved earlier this month in hitching his wagon to Mr Cameron's party amid such great fanfare.

And, one might add, not just "intellectually exhausted". Exhausted full stop.

Personally I blame the kids. No seriously. An interesting feature of the Blair and Brown governments is just how many leading ministers have young children (by which I mean children under 10).

Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been in this category, of course, and among Mr Brown's senior colleagues, both of the Milibands, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and Douglas Alexander all have young children, and those are just the ministers I can think of off the top of my head.

I cannot think of any previous government where this is true. Indeed I can hardly think of any Cabinet ministers in any previous government who had young kids, though there must have been some. The current situation is the product of two trends.

First, the tendency of middle class couples to have children much later - in their 30s and 40s rather than their 20s - and conversely the declining age of Cabinet ministers.

At one point Mr Brown had six Cabinet members under 40.

In the past the children of leading politicians tended to be either teenagers or grown up. And there is another obvious factor, too. These days fathers are expected to play a much bigger role in childcare. Children cannot just be left with the wife or nanny all day, and every day.

I know, as the father of a three-year old, just how difficult it is to get any time to do serious reading at home, let alone have a quiet think and plan ahead. Weekends are fully occupied, and the only spare time is the late evenings when one is already pretty tired. It must be a lot worse for busy ministers with full diaries, constant public pressure, media attention and constituency duties.

Young children are no great respecters of parental sleep. You have to wake up when they wake up. Worse still are those occasions in the middle of the night when they insist on clambering into bed with you, as happens, I'm told, with one senior minister.

Come to think of it, it is remarkable after 12 years in office, that Cabinet members think of anything new, and do not live in a daze of total exhaustion, sleep deprivation and intellectual paralysis. Or some critics might say...

But things could be almost as bad if the Conerservatives are elected next year. Both David Cameron and George Osborne have young children, and so does another leading player Michael Gove.

And just to be balanced, I ought to point out that Nick Clegg has young kids too. Indeed has there ever been a time in British history when all three main party leaders had children?