So farewell then Lord Rooker

The news that Lord (call me Jeff) Rooker has gone off to spend more time decorating his house will come as a big disappointment to many farmers who believed that for once they had a farm minister who actually understood the pressures the industry faced.

It’s also a blow to those of us in the world of journalism who rage against the bland. Jeff Rooker was never a minister who could be accused of being dull. He was remarkably frank, and honest, even when that meant rocking boats.

I have two memories of encounters with him that stand out.

Back in the late nineteen nineties during his first tour of duty at what was then MAFF I was studio producing `Farming Today' in Birmingham on a live programme. Jeff Rooker, as he was then, was booked to come onto the programme, we thought in an interview conducted over the telephone. He would ring us. His press office insisted that we couldn’t ring him, as a minister it was unthinkable that we should have access to his home phone number - although it was in everybody's contact book anyway.

We waited, and waited, for the phone call until just two minutes before we went live at ten past six in the morning. Then the phone rang. It was the security guard on the front desk at the now long demolished Pebble Mill. “Is anybody there expecting a Mr Rooker? He’s in the front reception”

A mad dash ensued down the Pebble Mill corridor and the Minister, a Birmingham MP, was in front of the microphone with five minutes to spare. He could talk for England and I spent a very entertaining fifteen minutes chatting to him on the steps of Pebble Mill as he left the building after the programme.

My other memory was the Royal Show of 2007, a matter of days after Gordon Brown was crowned Prime Minister. The Obligatory reshuffle saw the replacement of David Milliband by Hilary Benn, but much to everybody’s surprise Lord Rooker stayed, infact I think he was even promoted up the ministerial ladder. No-one was more surprised than the noble Lord himself.

As we stood outside in a rare moment of sunshine at that year’s rain sodden event he told me that he’d just assumed he’d be booted out to make way for new blood, and had gone home to complete some much needed decorating when the surprise phone call came asking him to remain in the department as minister for Farming and Animal Health.

It’s not unusual to get ministers who will be frank and honest off the record, it was a joy to have a minister who would do that when the microphones were turned on.