Here is a political spouse who has plenty to say, almost all of it compelling – about the world, about the Bush White House, about policy, about her own less than smooth life story – and never mind if sometimes she uses blunt language or chooses the wrong moment.The question has been a favourite in the political parlours of Washington, DC, ever since the notion of a Kerry bid arose. Was she talking to someone else on the podium in the middle of his victory speech?
She was But don’t be surprised. No one can accuse Heinz Kerry, 65, of not doing her bit for her husband’s campaign, darting about the country to warm up voters, often on her own She uses a private jet to lend a campaigning hand But rest assured, she is no “prop” or ever could be. She looked glamorous, with a green cashmere shawl around her shoulders She smiled, flashed a thumbs-up to the crowd But wait. The first glimpse most of us had of Teresa Heinz Kerry was the night her husband, John Kerry, won the Iowa caucuses, the first round in the long race for the Democratic nomination for president.

And he rides a sheep rather than a horse.”I feel a new series coming on.’Catterick’ starts on BBC3 from Sunday 15 February, and will air on BBC2 the following week.. “What about a British McCloud?” beams Reeves, a metaphorical light-bulb switching on in his head. “He’s a farmer who lives on moorland and although he wears tights, he’s still got all the answers. And I wonder if they’ve found an equivalent to Mark Lamarr and Will Self [Shooting Stars' previous and current team captains, respectively] – grumpy Viking types with a grudge.” Reeves’ fear is that the Danish Shooting Stars will be watered-down like Fitz, the American version of Cracker. “The US networks wouldn’t allow him to be a fat alcoholic gambler with a collapsing marriage, so he had to be a faintly portly, really good-looking bloke with no personal problems whatsoever who was great at detective work.”At once, this triggers Vic and Bob back into their quirky-detective riff. Immediately, they launch into an explanation of how chuffed they are to have been invited over to Denmark to watch a recording of a Danish-language version of Shooting Stars.”Danish is a beautiful language,” enthuses Mortimer, “I can’t wait to see the two Danes they’ve got playing us as quiz-masters. You’d hope that people would realise I was having a laugh.” He pauses before adding, with an eyebrow raised above those familiar spectacle-rims: “Gone out of fashion, doilies, haven’t they? All the doily shops are shut.”We’re back on the terrain where Reeves and Mortimer feel most at ease, batting light, ludicrous gags back and forth.

We were doing a photo shoot recently and I said, ‘I demand to have an apple presented on a doily when I get there’ They took it seriously This apple on a doily arrived. It’s assumed you will be out on the town the whole time, going to all the premieres and so on.” He’s more likely to be at home, he says, “reading books” or painting (Reeves is also a well-regarded artist whose book of artwork, called Sunboiled Onions, was described by one critic as “a masterpiece of nonsense literature in direct descent from Edward Lear”).These days, according to Reeves, he and Mortimer have reached the stage where “we have a laugh with the idea of fame. Overnight, the comedian became tabloid fodder – much to his obvious discomfort. He protests that the tabloids have consistently misrepresented him. “They don’t really want to write about someone as sordidly dull as me,” he sighs, “so they invent a character. Without naming names, you read of these double acts that hate each other I cannot believe they’ve stuck together. It must have been so shit.”The only dark period came when Reeves’s first marriage collapsed and his then wife departed with another woman.