Andy McSmith's Diary: The enemy within Chequers at Sam Cam's delayed 40th

There were many strange things about the party that David and Samantha Cameron threw at Chequers last week.

It is reputed to have been Sam Cam’s 40th birthday celebration – held rather late as she is now 44, but she and her husband have had a busy four years.

The 450-year-old manor house used to be a place of quiet retreat, which in Neville Chamberlain’s time had only one telephone, in the butler’s pantry, but last Friday night the wood-panelled Great Hall, with its Old Masters hanging on the walls and its Elizabethan-style ceiling, reverberated to the noise of a disco.

Sarah HB, former host of BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, acted as DJ. She, by the way, has angrily denied a report in The Daily Mail that HB stands for “hard bitch”. She says it was a moniker given to her at school, and does not stand for anything. She also says that her comment that taking drugs can “be quite fun” was taken out of context.

One of the names on the guest list is a bit of a surprise. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, you will recall, was attacked earlier this month by George Osborne for its “hyperbolic” coverage of the Autumn Statement. The Camerons’ guests included Sir Christoph Brooke, who was at Eton with Cameron, who came accompanied by his wife, Sarah Montague, a presenter of the Today programme. They let the enemy in.

Misplaced Tory sensitivities

I am sorry I missed the recent fun in Devon over the meaning of the word “cull”. It centres on an independent councillor from Ottery St Mary named Claire Wright, who plans to run against the incumbent Tory MP for East Devon, Hugo Swire, next year.

Last month, a member of the public wrote a comment on her blog, saying: “Cull all Tory councillors.” It is pretty obvious to almost anyone that this was a call to throw the Tories out of office at the next election, but the secretary of the Tory group on East Devon council, Phil Twiss, interpreted it as a “highly offensive and threatening” incitement to mass murder.

He demanded Wright remove it from her blog, which she did – and then he complained to the police, who have, understandably, decided to take no action.

I wonder how Twiss would have reacted if he had been alive in the 1830s, and had been introduced to the MP for Pontefract, Sir Culling Smith. I imagine he would have run away screaming in terror.

One not to miss

I have just realised that 2014 was the year of the Second Global Summit on the Health Effects of Yogurt, which included a talk by Toon van Hooijdonk on “Yogurt and sustainability: energy and protein conversion by dairy cows.” And I missed it, dammit.

Euro defies Boris’s forecast

The current political turmoil in Greece reminds me of a small anniversary. On 18 December 2011, Boris Johnson foretold the break-up of the eurozone. “I would be amazed if we were all sitting here next year and the euro had not undergone some sort of change,” he told The Andrew Marr Show. Three years have slipped by, and the euro is still as it was. How amazed Boris must be.

Death by turnip

Another anniversary. It was 133 years ago, on 19 December 1881, that the Tory MP Sir William Payne-Gallwey was out shooting in Bagby, North Yorkshire, when he fell over and landed on a turnip. The impact killed the poor man.

This is the last Diary for 2014. It will return when Parliament reconvenes, in the week beginning 5 January. A selection of the prime cuts from this year’s diaries are available as an e-book, ‘The Diary 2014’, available here