Changing to suit the audience

I was searching Google for something else, when I stumbled upon this Guardian article from January 2004. Nominally, it's an interview with Mandy Telford, the then president of that ridiculous far-left talking shop, the National Union of Students (NUS), although in fact it consists primarily of the reminiscences of Telford's egotistical interviewer (and predecessor as NUS president), David Aaronovitch. For the most part, it is, as you would expect, rather dull, but the following extract did amuse me, and serves as a useful illustrator of its subject's character:

My predecessor, Trevor Phillips, now CRE boss, when at the NUS conference, used to change his clothes according to debates he was speaking in. If it was a discussion about race he would wear a bright-coloured ethnic African shirt. For the perennial debate on salaries for NUS full-timers, it was a pair of trousers with a hole in the arse.

Now, of course, Trev sticks to the plain old suit and tie combination. Better at hiding his ever-present charlatanry, perhaps...