The Student Prince

TIM BLAIR has very kindly linked to the earlier post about the two Don Watsons, prompting commenter Consuela Potez to recall the student days she shared with a future speechwriter. Her memories confirm that Watson embraced unctuous priggery as a vocation long before ex-boss Paul Keating came to recognise his former friend as a life form lower, lighter and less valuable than fluff  in the trouser cuff of a Zegna suit.

Here is what she shares with Tim and his Right Wing Double-Cab Death Bogans:

I was an undergraduate at LaTrobe uni in the same year as Don, who spent so much time schmoozing the academics that for a few months at least I believed that he actually was one, some precociously brilliant young lecturer!

My impression then of Don then was of a power worshipper and a self promoter.  That may have been unfair, but over the subsequent years he’s been pretty much a cheer leader for whatever ‘progressive’ fad or obsession was current. He got stuck into Peter Ryan when it was fashionable to do so and he got stuck into Keith Windschuttle in the same safe circumstances. He sucked up to Keating long after he’d ceased to be employed by Keating and, it would appear, long after they’d had a private row. He also married into the ‘progressive’ aristocracy, Hilary McPhee.

These days, Don doesn’t seem to say or write anything without first calculating how well it will go down at an inner city dinner party.

Consuala Potez 

LaTrobe, eh? Well that figures.