Remember that clip of Michael Gove dancing on his own in a nightclub in Aberdeen at 2am, all wide-eyed and waggly-armed, like one of the Thunderbird puppets out on the lash? It was a reason to like him a bit more than you used to, yes? There is another reason.

The other reason – and there may be more than two, who can say – is that when Mr Gove becomes Lord Gove next month, the name he’ll take will be Lord Gove of Torry. Gove said he wanted to use the name Torry because it’s the part of Aberdeen where his dad ran a fish processing business. He also wanted to pay tribute to his parents who adopted him when he was a baby, which is nice, it’s touching. “I’d never have been able to achieve anything in my life if it hadn’t been for their love and kindness,” he said.

I must admit though that my first reaction on hearing Lord Gove would be Lord Gove of Torry was that the words don’t belong together: Lord and Torry. I know Torry well – half my family are from there – and it’s not a place that’s very lordly, thank goodness. And despite only missing out by one letter, it’s never been a Tory sort of place either. So a Tory calling himself Torry felt at first like a bit of a bad-taste joke, and judging by the vox-pops journalists did in the area, some of the people of Torry feel the same way.

But then I thought about it some more and the scepticism I felt about a Lord called Torry started to turn into something else. It’s nice that Mr Gove wants to pay respect to his parents – as I say, it’s a reason to........

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