Let’s get one thing clear from the outset: I’m not a small man.
I’m 5ft 9in, which seems to me an entirely respectable height for an adult male. There’s no waste, no unnecessary space taken up, no massive head weighing me down, or gangly, barely controlled limbs flapping about the place.
In fact, I’m 5ft 9in and a bit. Perhaps the fact that I’m always minded to mention the “bit” suggests I’m more sensitive than I let on but, overall, I’m content. I can reach most things, I’m a little taller than my father, and I’ve never heard the opposite sex complain about a lack of inches (so to speak).
For some reason, though, my daughters have taken to calling me small. Most current conversations, regardless of subject, end with one of them saying something like: “But, you are quite little, dad”, or: “You’ve done well for such a small man.”
I don’t know how this began, but it seems to have become a “hilarious” family routine. How we (they) laugh, until I leave the room and, unseen, make a rude gesture from the hallway.
I have pointed out to them that I’m taller than Rishi Sunak, who might soon be prime minister. Sunak is 5ft 5in (and a bit, he would no doubt insist), which is quite small for a bloke. He probably needed help reaching reports on the higher Treasury shelves when he was chancellor.
From photographs, his wife is quite a bit littler again than he is, so perhaps they’ve adjusted the height of things in the family home. It would make sense. In fact, it sounds quite cute.
Would Sunak be the shortest PM in history?
I haven’t met Sunak, but I know a businessman who did at Cop26 in Glasgow, when he was still chancellor. It was very odd, my friend reports.
He was ushered through various rooms, each sanctum becoming more inner, the hum of power intensifying. Then, there Sunak was. “He was honestly sitting on something that looked a bit like a throne,” my source says. “It would have been quite impressive if he wasn’t so small and skinny. He looked like a jockey at a weigh-in, or the Wizard of Oz.”
I’ve no idea if Sunak would be the smallest man ever to live in Number 10 (Margaret Thatcher was 5ft 4in) but, given that the average height of a British male in the mid-19th Century was 5ft 7in, he would surely be among the titchiest. He is also considerably shorter than today’s average UK male who, to my immense satisfaction, is 5ft 9in. (Some studies say 5ft 10in, but we’ll ignore those.)
The jokes have already started, of course. When Sunak was photographed at the weekend wearing a £3,500 bespoke suit, various wags on social media pointed out that he’d have got it cheaper because there’s no VAT on kids’ clothes. He must be careful never to say “I’m not happy”, in case someone retorts – as they once did to the equally tiny former Speaker John Bercow – “Which one are you, then?”
No small man syndrome here
There was some public surprise when Sunak’s real height became known, because he has the proportions of a larger man, and so doesn’t look small in photographs. His PR team have always used jiggery-pokery to ensure that he looks taller in photos than he is, even when in company. It says something that they feel they have to – as if Downing Street, like an Alton Towers rollercoaster, has some kind of minimum height requirement.
Are we so shallow as a nation to count someone’s size against them? I mean, after Boris, one would presume there are no limits on anything.
Smaller people tend to have more symmetrical features and better proportions than the freakishly large
One thing Sunak doesn’t seem to suffer from, thankfully, is small man syndrome. I’ve worked with too many short, angry fellas over the years to doubt that this condition exists.
There’s something about viewing the world, and other people, from below that seems to drive many little guys bonkers. From Napoleon, the original raging ankle-biter, to the former editor of mine who, when playing five-a-side football, used to take delight in wiping out anyone taller than himself (so, almost everyone), many small men have a will to power that is, frankly, disturbing. Sunak seems too smooth, rich and effortlessly successful to bother about all that.
He’s a good-looking guy, too. Smaller people tend to have more symmetrical features and better proportions than the freakishly large (anyone over, say, 6ft). That’s why most leading Hollywood men are short – they don’t look like a knock-off Frankenstein’s monster, with a crazy-paved slab for a chin or a shoe size into which you could fit an average family bungalow.
The tall are the worst, swaggering around, making jokes about what it’s like living in a world built for smaller people, believing themselves especially strong and powerful, all while their ankles peep from their too-short trousers and any journey on public transport requires them to squash their knees up around their chest.
In the end, 5ft 9in seems to me to be the perfect height. It lets me both go on rollercoasters and then sit comfortably for the duration of the ride. Given the problems facing the country Rishi Sunak wants to govern, that, I predict, is about to come in handy.
Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank, Reform Scotland
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