News

On Tuesday evening I was delighted that about 20 members of Conservative Future (the under 30s campaigning arm of the Conservative party) were able to join me at the new 'GENEVA' telephone calling centre at CCHQ to conduct a telephone canvassing session of Luton South.

We made more than 800 calls that night to Luton residents and received a very positive response - reflecting what we are also hearing on the dooorsteps with direct canvassing on the streets.

After the call session I joined the CF team for drinks at the nearby Marquis of Granby Pub.

As I was walking to the pub I was talking to one of the CF team about new media/googling etc and mentioned that a work colleague had recently got very excited when she had 'googled' me and saw that my name came up several times in associaion with 'Robert Pattinson'.  She - of course - assumed that I must be best mates with the Hollywood Hearthrob of that name, famous for his roles in the Harry Potter and twilight films - and was somewhat dissapointed to learn that the link was in fact to my old school:  the slightly less glamorous Robert Pattinson Comprehensive School in my home town of North Hykeham, Lincolnshire.

And then in a bizarre twise of fate, who should we see in the pub:  Robert Pattinson himself - along with Twilight costar Kristen Stewart.  One of the team tried to get a picture taken of him but his heavies were not very keen on that; but the sighting was enough to send some ot the CF twitterati in a frenzy and they started twittering about their star sighting.

Within a few minutes someone had written on his Twitter account:
"In the Marquis of Granby with Nigel Huddleston, not to mention Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart!"  It was further reported that they had "shared a couple of kisses"!

In a fantastic example of how new media can spread news so quickly, the twitter led to Twilight fans descending on the pub.  One such fan twittered:

"Twilight Crew has now left - just the Tories I'm afraid..." 

And now this 'star sighting' seems to have been reported in every gossip website and Twilight fan site on the planet and even made it into the China Daily!

What I am particularly proud of, though, is that on the comments section beneath one such article someone has commented 'who the **** is Nigel Huddleston."  Nice.  I know my place!