Leadership Quote by Malcolm Wilson

A politician calling himself a star is either vanity or a wink; Wilson threads the needle by turning the compliment into a self-portrait with dents. "I think I am a star" flirts with celebrity culture and the old public-life temptation to confuse attention with authority. Then the second clause snaps the balloon with a pin: "simply a funny-shaped star". The phrasing works because it keeps the ego while sabotaging it, a preemptive joke that steals thunder from critics who might accuse him of self-importance, oddness, or unreliability.

The subtext is shrewd: politics rewards recognizability, not perfection. By admitting he's "funny-shaped", Wilson frames his quirks as authenticity rather than incompetence. It's an early version of the now-familiar "own your flaws" strategy, except it comes from a world where politicians were expected to look more uniform and sound more sober. The line also hints at the uneasy overlap between governance and performance. Stars are looked at, projected onto, mythologized. A "funny-shaped" star is one that refuses clean mythmaking, insisting the public take the whole irregular package.

Contextually, for a mid-20th-century politician (especially in the British tradition of dry understatement), this is a way to signal charisma without seeming to beg for it. It's modesty as armor: he accepts the spotlight, but he controls the joke, and therefore controls the narrative.