The best worst political excuse ever, courtesy of Grant Shapps

This is Grant Shapps, the chairman of the Conservative Party.

Before he became an MP in 2005 he set up and ran a web publishing business under the name Michael Green, and speaking to LBC radio just last month he said:

To be absolutely clear I don't have a second job and I have never had a second job whilst being an MP. End of story.

I wrote in a pen name, as many people have done in the past. The only difference is, I put my actual name and the pen name next to each other, which is why people know about it.

It's before I came into politics many years ago.

But today it emerged, thanks to the Guardian, that in 2006 'Michael Green' was selling a self-help book called Stinking Rich 3, which people were promised would make them a "ton of cash by Christmas".

Shapps/Green has now rowed back slightly on the firm denial issued to LBC, saying that he "screwed up" over the exact dates and that he in fact "over firmly" denied something.

We now fully expect "over firmly" denying something to enter the political lexicon when scandals come a knocking.

Meanwhile, this whole affair is an excellent excuse to revisit this video, from the 2012 Tory conference, of Shapps being followed around by then-Newsnight reporter Michael Crick.

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