Anchor
The recent cabinet reshuffle came under criticism for a shift to predominantly white, male ministers. Prime Minister's assistant Mary Hale is here to explain how reshuffles are done.
Mary
You get criticism however you arrange the cabinet. Rather than agonise over choices for days, it's just as effective but quicker to adopt a random approach.
Anchor
Random? Surely you don't mean truly random - it's not all decided by rolling dice.
Mary
Of course not. That would be ridiculous. You can't shuffle dice. Obviously we use playing cards.
Anchor
Just a normal deck of 52 playing cards?
Mary
No. We tried that at first. But the prime minister thought we didn't need any black cards, very few MPs are really 'diamonds' and we couldn't think of any to be represented by hearts.
Anchor
That's the whole pack discounted.
Mary
Not quite. We still had the two jokers - but there was no question that they were staying in charge.
Anchor
So cards were a non-starter then?
Mary
Not at all - it wouldn't be a reshuffle without cards. We just had to use a non-standard deck. Happy Families cards seemed an obvious choice.
Anchor
'Happy Families' cards? Used without any changes or irony?
Mary
We made some small changes - most of the Wife and Daughter cards were removed - but other than that 'yes' a normal pack.
Anchor
And they're just shuffled and cards picked at random for each post. Isn't that too unpredictable?
Mary
You're bound to get some odd choices, such as Mr Soot the Sweep becoming Environment secretary, Mr Carriage the Undertaker taking over health, or Jeremy Hunt.
Anchor
It all sounds like a lot of trouble just to get a random result - wouldn't it would be easier next time just to toss coins?
Mary
We tried that, but it nearly split the coalition as both Cameron and Clegg are convinced that the other one's the tosser.
