#Kitchen sink drama for Miliband as homely photo backfires

A harmless picture of Ed Miliband and his wife Justine sipping a cuppa at their north London home, in what appears to be a relatively modest looking kitchen, has ended up providing dream tabloid headlines.

It turns out that the couple were filmed by the BBC in a second kitchen at their Dartmouth Park home.

Labelling him “Two kitchens Miliband”, the Daily Mail reported that Labour’s plans to portray its leader as an ordinary family man had backfired after he was pictured in his second kitchen.

— Jenni Russell (@jennirsl) March 12, 2015

Ed Miliband's kitchen is lovely. Daily Mail pix: the functional kitchenette by sitting room for tea and quick snacks.

The auxiliary kitchen, or kitchenette, which has a hob and oven, but apparently no room for a table, was revealed to the world by the Times columnist Jenni Russell, an old friend of the Labour leader – who is godfather to her son.

Russell tweeted. “Ed Miliband’s kitchen is lovely. Daily Mail pix: the functional kitchenette by sitting room for tea and quick snacks.”

This prompted her fellow Times columnist Hugo Rifkind to tweet. “Suddenly struck by the image of Ed Miliband secretly running two kitchen suppers at once, like the booze-up episode of Blackadder.”

Vine wrote her column after the Milibands were shown briefly in their kitchen during a BBC film recorded earlier this week by its deputy political editor, James Landale.