7th February 2026
It begins, as all great scandals do, with a brown paper envelope. Not the kind containing sandwiches or scribbled notes, but the kind bulging with cash—handed over with a wink and a muttered "just a few questions, mind you."
At the time, I treated these envelopes with the same casual indifference one reserves for takeaway menus. They piled up in drawers, cupboards, and glove compartments, until the sheer weight of them threatened to collapse the furniture.
And yet, somehow, I forgot. Entire bags of money slipped my mind, as though they were nothing more than receipts for milk.
Fast forward to the present, and I discover quite by accident that I had £75,000 lying around. A tidy sum, enough to buy a small house or fund a lifetime of questions in Parliament. But in my defence, who among us hasn't misplaced a fortune or two? It’s practically a rite of passage in public life.
The real scandal, of course, is not that I forgot, but that I remembered. Suddenly the narrative shifts: from “innocent oversight” to “cash-for-questions.” The envelopes, once dismissed as harmless stationery, now look suspiciously like evidence. The £75,000, once a forgotten windfall, now resembles a bribe.
And so the questions pile up faster than the envelopes ever did. Who gave me the cash? What did they want in return? How many questions were asked, and how many answers were conveniently forgotten? Most importantly, how many other politicians are rummaging through their attics right now, hoping to find a forgotten fortune before the press does?
In the end, my amnesia is less a personal failing than a national tradition. We live in a country where money flows in paper bags, questions are asked for cash, and memory is as selective as a committee report. The envelopes may have been brown, but the embarrassment is scarlet.
In the end most of us have a pleasant surprise when we find a pound down the back of the sofa.