BBC NEWS | Politics | Cameron's 'beautiful boy' dies

BBC NEWS | Politics | Cameron's 'beautiful boy' dies

A couple of weeks ago I was driving in the car ith "Oliver's CD" playing. When Beautiful Boy came on I told him this was my song about him because he's my beautiful boy. A few days later when it came on again he told Hayley "This is my song isn't it Mummy".

I guess every son is his father's beautiful boy. And for that reason I was heartbroken for David Cameron when I heard his news. It doesn't matter that he is unlikely to ever get my vote. Politics shrinks into insignificance alongside the universal human experiences of birth, life and death. And the death of a child is perhaps the hardest to bear of all.

I know that Ivan changed his father. The slicked-back hair and arrogance of the public schoolboy faded in recent years to make him the successful politician he is today. And that is apprently in no small part down to time spent with his son in hospital, reading books to children from less fortunate backgrounds and seeing the public sector first-hand.

But today politics is almost irrelevant. Today he has to deal with a grief I hope I never have to know. He has my deepest sympathy.