How Ann Widdecombe wriggled out of hard covers

In all the profiles, one question has never been asked. What about that novel then, Ann? Eh?

SHE'S FUNNY, she's approachable, she's firm but fair, she's the voice of common sense. Beside the new school of grinning control freaks in their Paul Smith suits, she's the human face of politics. If Ann Widdecombe did not exist, the media would have to invent her. In fact, come to think of it, the media did invent her, after several months of casting about for a conservative politician with any discernible character.

Interviewers adore her, with her "Doris Karloff" jokes, that zany business about women prisoners being manacled to their beds (it was a mistake, all right?), her double act in the Shadow Cabinet with a production-line Tory smoothie. Yet, strangely enough, in all the profiles, one question has never been asked.

What about that novel then, Ann? Eh? So where is it?

Maybe you've forgotten already. During the heady days following the election last year, a few journalists managed to drag their eyes away from the exciting, youthful vigour of the new administration to investigate what was happening to yesterday's men and women. There were heartbreaking stories of some ministers having to live off their non-executive directorships, of others having to spend two, sometimes even three afternoons a week in City boardrooms.

Ann was different. She was going to write a novel. It wouldn't take long. She would sit down in front of a word processor and just get on with it. That was her approach to life: no fuss, no bother. Spring 1998, the thing would be done.

There was mild surprise when Ann revealed that her literary role model was Pamela Hansford-Johnson, a solid, middle-order novelist whose work has been out of print for a couple of decades, but otherwise this career move was regarded as eminently sensible. The fact that, so far as anyone knew, she had not written so much as paragraph of fiction before - the equivalent of a professional novelist announcing he was going to be a minister without bothering to join a political party - was not deemed to be worthy of mention.

It was at that moment that Ann revealed herself to be, in spite of the carefully nurtured maiden-aunt image, a shrewd media operator. Of course she should write a novel. It's what celebrities do when their careers are temporarily becalmed.

For actors and comedians, for example, tossing off some light fiction between engagements has become so popular that Rada must be considering adding a creative-writing module to their core curriculum. Michael Palin, Hugh Laurie, Ade Edmundson, Jane Asher, Stephen Fry, Ardal O'Hanlon, Robert Newman, the does-my-bum-look-big-in-this woman from The Fast Show: some of them extend their acting persona into their written work, while others engage the help of a hands-on editor. Already this autumn's name novels - from Richard E Grant, Nigel Planer, Sebastian Coe - are thundering towards us over the horizon.

Why the need to write fiction? It can't be money; most of these people could earn more from opening a few supermarkets or appearing in a TV commercial for shampoo or beer. Somehow it seems unlikely to be the sheer pleasure of creating an imaginative world. One glance at those who write for a living - shifty, insecure egotists with disastrous personal lives - is enough to confirm Simenon's gloomy description of fiction as "a profession of unhappiness".

No, tragic as it seems, part-time celebrity novelists appear to have bought into the fantasy that is widely and sadistically peddled by journalists, that the act of writing a novel will bring meaning and depth to the triviality of existence, and that anyone - comic, politician, even a bus driver, for heaven's sake - can do it.

The fact that it's rather difficult, takes a long time and needs to be done without an audience applauding at the end of every completed page, receives less publicity. Hooked on approval, most public figures churn out one novel in which they carefully present themselves as endearing, wisecracking, lovable people - great in life, disastrous in fiction - and then suddenly discover that opening supermarkets is a rather attractive option for a back-up career.

Sometimes even completing the one novel is too much for them.

It's possible that Ann's homage to Pamela Hansford-Johnson is even now being honed to perfection by a publisher, and that her mind is swarming with ideas for a follow-up. If not, and she has given up fiction up in favour of something relatively simple like being shadow Health Secretary, it would be an act of great kindness to would-be novelists everywhere if she owned up in her next firm but fair profile.

Miles Kington is on holiday