GOODNESS knows what possessed Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, better known as Mrs Nick Clegg, to give her interview to Grazia magazine.

It can’t be money, because the pair are already rolling in it – he’s Deputy Prime Minister, she’s a hot-shot lawyer.

Maybe she’s in the early stages of Cherie (Antoinette) Blair syndrome.

Certainly her assertion that “I do not think that what we do is different to what anyone else does” rang slightly hollow as she apparently has a nanny and by her own admission spends much of her time flying to Spain for her Very Important Job.

So not much like being a dinner lady or a hospital receptionist, then.

Miriam wants us to know that her husband ‘kills himself’ to be there for the school run, apparently rushing off to early morning meetings before rushing back to ferry Cleggs minor to their various educational establishments.

She may find all this remarkable and newsworthy but doesn’t she know that most decent parents “kill themselves” one way and another to look after their kids? Unlike the Cleggs, however, most parents have to do all this without gargantuan salaries, without a nanny to take up the slack and without the guarantee of places for their children at the top state schools.

They do have the nagging fear that their kids will never achieve their potential and go to university because they don’t have the money – because a certain politician reneged on his election promises in the most cynical and damaging nature.

Or they fear that even if they get there, their offspring will be crippled by debt for the rest of their natural life.

Not content with parading her husband’s familial devotion, however, Miriam is also very fierce on the issue of work/life balance.

“I always get very surprised when I’m asked this question because, you know, I have three children, I have a busy career and I have a very busy husband,” she huffs.

“Nobody would ask him how he balances everything.”

No, they wouldn’t. But only because they don’t actually care. We are not living in communist Russia or, indeed, Afghanistan and women, especially those in Mrs Clegg’s privileged position, can thankfully do as they damn well please. And so can men.

The thing that really grinds is that she obviously hasn’t considered how insensitive all this prattling about her business could be. Lots of parents would love to be busy with work – if they hadn’t lost their job because of the recession.

And what about all those poor people who actually have killed themselves? Not because they have faffed around ostentatiously after their children but because they can’t face a debt-ridden, jobless future and they have no faith that Nick Clegg and David Cameron’s government can help them.