It is a serious occupational hindrance for Downing Street advisers to become household names — as figures from Marcia Falkender to more recent examples can attest. But it is also an encumbrance to be forgotten, as one suspects Emma Sidi may be finding as her wonderfully zany comedy Emma Sidi is Sue Gray rolls in to the West End after delighting audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe. So much has changed since that heady Scottish summer. The shine has come off our new government more quickly than the sparkle in Sir Keir Starmer’s expensive glasses. And who would have guessed that our heroine would already have had her services as his Chief of Staff terminated, having in the end spent more time on gardening leave than in Downing Street?

If Sidi has chosen an arcane topic to sustain a 75-minute, one-woman show, she leans into it shrewdly. After all, how much do any of us know about the woman who has filled more column inches than any civil servant since Clive Ponting, her work in Westminster shrouded in almost as much mystery as her time behind the bar in Newry?

“Ohmygod, it’s me, Sue Gray,” Sidi’s incarnation announces: “You probably heard of my report, but didn’t read it.” When this run at the Soho Theatre was announced, its protagonist was still at the height of her powers. I booked expecting a Shakespearean comedy; now it feels more like being one of the first audiences to have witnessed one of the great Bard’s history plays, the contemporary figure being chronicled passing from fact to folklore before our eyes. Perhaps in years to come A Level students will study this tragic arc, and write essays pondering whether the real Sue Gray ever existed at all. 

Fortunately, a strong showing of civil servants have given Sidi’s delightful conceit a clued-up audience and a sell-out run in Soho (further dates in Leeds, Glasgow, Reading, Norwich, Manchester and at the Southwark Playhouse are booking now). My companion, a former civil servant, recognised a number of colleagues from some of the more sensitive corners of Whitehall. A suspicious number of suits and conspicuously stifled laughter gave the game away when we saw it on Budget Day; Sidi herself honed in on a pair bureaucrats in the front row and drew them into her infectious act. All this adds up to a unique theatrical experience: a knowing audience trying not to let on that it’s in the know. Fortunately, civil servants are well-versed in inscrutability. 

Such reservation from the spectators might serve as a predicament for other comics, but Sidi riffs off the crowd effortlessly, conducting laughs with a mere sideways glance or the raising of an eyebrow. The funniest vignettes come during the improvised (and regular) water cooler breaks with members of the audience. 

For Sidi’s Sue does not work too hard. She is more Terri Coverly than Niccolò Machiavelli. She works from home in commuter-belt Stevenage, skips COBRA meetings she suspects will be boring, and spends her time browsing the ASOS website when she should be writing her report. She particularly enjoys her time in Northern Ireland — “It’s great: they never show up there.” This is less Deep State and more deep sleep. 

But Sidi gives us flashes of Sue’s omnipotence. She is dismayed at the redactions made to her Partygate report, but boasts of the eye-popping details she excised herself. “Grant Shapps ate a frog. No one needs to hear about that.”

Indeed, I found being in the presence of this all-powerful character rather disconcerting. There is a nervousness which comes with sitting in the audience for any stand-up comedy, hoping to avoid being called up onstage or targeted to fuel the routine. Sitting in the third row, I found myself more fearful than ever, keenly feeling — like I did as a special adviser, and as a Minister — the impossibility of escaping the glare of Sue’s all-seeing eye. 

… if there is one thing I learned in Government, it was not to underestimate Sue Gray

In Edinburgh, Sidi’s show ended on a high, with Sue Gray bestriding Westminster and Whitehall, master of all she surveyed. Now, she must look forward to her nebulous new role as the Prime Minister’s Envoy to the Nations and Regions — a role the real Sue Gray is yet to begin, and which Sidi’s version says makes her sound “like a carrier pigeon”. 

But if there is one thing I learned in Government, it was not to underestimate Sue Gray. At the Home Office and in Number 10, I came to enjoy working with her — and have admiration for anyone who sticks their neck out in the service of our political parties. The comfort and job security of the Civil Service would have been an easier ride. I look forward to the inevitable peerage; in the meantime, I am grateful — clearly along with legions of her other admirers — to Emma Sidi for immortalising this almost mythological figure. I laughed along quietly, but knowingly. Just don’t tell Sue.

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Emma Sidi is Sue Gray ran at The Soho Theatre, 28 October–2 November, and is on tour until 30 November 2024.