Lifting the lid on political animals

Over a journalism career which began in 1978 as a wide-eyed and terrified 16-year-old interviewing the likes of a pyjama-clad Sir Robert Muldoon, political columnist Jane Clifton has collected her fair share of anecdotes.

Those often hilarious stories are told in Clifton's book Political Animals, Confessions of a Parliamentary Zoologist, which was launched at Parliament yesterday.

Clifton, 43, describes the book as a collection of pen-portraits and says it is not intended to be comprehensive or a documentary or "especially analytical".

"This is just an attempt to convey the colour, the barminess and, sometimes, the underlying well-meaningness of political animals," she said.

While it may not be an encyclopaedic index of Clifton's 20 years working in Parliament's press gallery, the book provides shrewd insight into politics and the personalities that drive it.

Clifton says she began writing the book last year at the instigation of former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald, who now works for the book's publisher Penguin.

The book explores the peculiar relationship between journalists and politicians - and touches on her own relationship with National MP Murray McCully.

The couple have been together for close to 20 years and Clifton devotes a chapter in the book to relationship - entitled 'Murray McCully - Please do not feed the MP'.

But the chapter (which begins with the line "Along the way, I acquired an MP of my own") gives little away about their personal life together.

Clifton is unapologetic about this.

"I don't really think that people are entitled to read about the ins and outs of your relationship."

The book provides the political junkie with many bits of trivia and observation into personalities - Michael Laws for example is useless at drinking and has a penchant to strut around in bike shorts.

There are also tidbits of gossip - late-night antics in the Speaker's chair and rumours of two of Sir Geoffrey Palmer's staffers caught on security video in a compromising position on his office suite.

Clifton also describes her first meeting Sir Robert Muldoon which begins with the line: "The first time I met Sir Robert Muldoon was in bed".

In fact Sir Robert was in a hospital bed and Clifton, then a cadet reporter at the Dominion, had the unenviable task of interviewing the cantankerous Prime Minister.

While that first meeting struck terror into the young Clifton, she says she came to admire the cunning politician.

"It is hard not to. You can say he did a lot of bad things, but he totally believed he was right and that it was for our own good.

"It is hard to quarrel with someone like that."

* Political Animals is available at Dymocks for $29.99