‘Panic’ as gory details of new EU ambassador’s childhood are revealed
Everyone’s disappointed to learn that the new EU ambassador spent his childhood in Leamington, and his student years at Warwick.
Britain's new EU ambassador turns out to have spent his childhood in Leamington and his student years at Warwick. Everyone is disappointed.
Tim Barrow, an inoffensive diplomat with whom we take no issue, spent the first twenty years of his life within a five-mile radius of Kenilworth.
News broke this morning that Sir Tim — who has several children, one wife and an impressive beard — grew up in our beloved stomping ground.
We can only imagine the sight of young Timmy aged ten — even then sporting a voluptuously greying mask of facial fur — skipping joyously among such landmarks as Jephson Gardens, Tesco and the church bus stop.
This master of diplomacy, surely a man of great intellect, was spared no expense in his education. He first attended Arnold Lodge School on Kenilworth Road, once the oldest prep school in Warwickshire, before gracing a minor public school in Warwick with his presence.
The most scintillating nugget, however, comes next. Where did the ambassador go after his upper sixth year?
We can reveal that the ambassador travelled nine miles north and enrolled at the alma mater we share with him — the obvious choice for any budding diplomat: matronly old UoW. Woz. Wozza.
This, of course, is the customary behaviour of those with a globetrotting, ambassadorial temperament.
No one seems to know quite what Timothy studied, or when he studied it. Mystery shrouds much of Barrow’s life, and his magnetism and allure abound accordingly.
Why TB decided not to stray beyond the confines of Leamington — hemmed in by the A46 to the north and by murderous crack-mothers to the south — until he’d obtained a degree, we shall never know.
One thing we can be sure of: Warwick alone was not enough to propel our favourite diplomat to his position of influence and eminence. Like the rest of them, he went to Oxford as a postgrad.