Victoria Coren: Face it, we all look dire on holiday - The Guardian

Fans of TV's toughest quiz show, Only Connect (back on BBC Four from 15 August, set your giant digital countdown devices now, tink-tink-tink), here's one for you: what links the following four items?

A pair of black loafers. A copy of Prosperity Without Growth by Tim Jackson. A tiny red rucksack. Samantha Cameron.

That's right, they're all things that our political leaders are taking on holiday. (Is it all right to refer to Mrs Cameron as a "thing" ? I mean it only in the strictest quizzing sense. To devoted quizzers, there is nothing in the world that can't be reduced to the simple status of "clue".)

The newspapers have been amusing us with photographs of David Cameron and George Osborne on their summer breaks, above sarky little captions about how badly they're dressed.

Makes a nice change, actually. It's usually only famous women whose clothing choices are laughed at, arrayed across those terrifying double-page spreads where their outfits look (to the lay reader) very similar but are divided sternly into "hit and miss" or "hot and not" or "Wow, Phwoarr, I Would" and "Bleurggh She Looks Like A Fat Old Stupid Ugly Disgusting Old Pig."

It's only when male politicians go on holiday that they fall victim to sartorial analysis; it's like that Twelfth Night tradition in which the maids may revel freely while the masters bear the yoke.

I'm not sure we should enjoy the role reversal, since it would be better if nobody were rude about anybody. Having said that, once we have the pictures…

Cameron didn't look too bad, he just wore black leather shoes in a hot Tuscan climate. Why not trainers, or flip-flops? You don't want to think too hard about the condition of his feet when those shoes squelched off again. Even if you appreciate formal footwear on a political leader, why slip-ons? Black, slip-on shoes spell European gigolo, not British prime minister. It's like he's put them on to slither across a dance floor and ask a rich widow what her star sign is.

George Osborne, meanwhile, could have kept Gok Wan busy for a year. His ill-fitting jeans and lumpy pockets said: "I'm just relaxing on holiday in these comfy old trews." Yet his grey suit jacket said: "I'm a serious, businesslike person, with a keen eye always on the nation's parlous finances" – in which case, a pair of don't-give-a-toss jeans from which his own wallet bulges so lavishly it can hardly fit, is nothing short of an insult. Perched atop the lot: a shiny little rucksack, new and urban, tiny as a clutch-bag, the campest thing I've seen since I bumped into two middle-aged male gamblers coming out of Celine Dion's Vegas show together, humming My Heart Will Go On.

Ed Miliband looked far better, snapped on Hampstead Heath (is he having his holiday there? Hampstead Heath would be a lovely place for a staycation: mild climate, beautiful woodland and, should the romantic mood arise, condoms everywhere), though his deck shoes were two sizes too big for him. Perhaps one of them got left behind at the palace ball; when Prince Charming declared that whomsoever owns it shall be the next on the throne, Ed Miliband insisted it was his.

Miliband's been teased because he was also seen carrying a pile of hardback books about economics, leadership and presidential campaigns. Oh bless him, with his dodgy septum and his special prime minister research.

Last week, I wrote about how grateful I feel when anybody seems to know the right thing to do, when I'm getting by on clumsy hope and prayer myself, and (trusting, making wishes and striving to self-improve) how dangerously susceptible we all are to the appearance of certainty in political speakers. The sight of Miliband mugging up on world finance and how to be a leader just makes us (me, anyway) want to hug him and try to help – which I suspect is not the best way to get elected prime minister, but possibly should be.

I trust, though, as we all giggle at the sight of these politicians looking vulnerable off duty, we don't forget to point the finger inward. I rarely go on holiday myself (please don't roll your eyes if you remember I was missing from this paper for three weeks last month; that was a poker trip. It was work. I was busy playing important card games). But my book packing is terrible wherever I go.

I'll cram a case with 19 tomes, despite knowing that I read at the speed of a small, struggling child (Do other people skip bits? I bet they skip bits) and would be lucky to finish one. And if I do finish one, it won't be The Finkler Question or The White Tiger because they've come on more trips than my passport and I've never opened either. But I haul them onto trains again anyway.

As for clothes, can any of us really manage a "capsule wardrobe"? I'll take 20 sweet summer dresses for a weekend trip but then it will be cold, and I'll have brought a pair of black tights but no winter shoes so I'll be "teaming" the opaques with incongruous coloured sandals and appearing on first glance to be suffering from the late stages of gangrene. I'll lose my sunglasses on day one and buy a cheap plastic pair that make me look, at best, like 1970s-era Elton John; at worst, 1990s-era Jonathan King.

That's all of us, right? And yet, we always take pictures of ourselves abroad! Sometimes they are the only photos we take of our families: draped in weird holiday clothing, pink and squinting in terrible local hats. Why do we do this? Why would we want anybody to see? At least the politicians, poor sods, have no choice.

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