London, March 26: Samantha Cameron, wife of the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, has brought the general election campaign in Britain to life by revealing she is expecting a baby in September.

Political analysts have started speculating that as a result of the pregnancy, Samantha, who was to be pitched against Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah, will be “treated with kid gloves” by the media.

The couple have admitted they are “completely thrilled”.

Asked if she was suffering morning sickness, Samantha said, “Yes,” but she was also “very, very delighted, as you can imagine”.

In the Commons, Cameron thanked MPs from all sides who had congratulated him on the new baby but some had wondered “how you get the time to do it”.

Both Gordon Brown and the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, have sent their best wishes. There have been good natured suggestions from others that Cameron “timed” the conception for maximum political advantage.

What might surprise Indian observers is the remarkable degree of frankness with which senior British politicians are able to talk about very personal aspects of their lives.

Samantha, a businesswoman dubbed “Sam Cam” by the tabloid press, is 38, while her husband is 43.

Cameron married Samantha Sheffield, the daughter of Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet and Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones (now the Viscountess Astor), on June 1, 1996, at Ginge Manor in Oxfordshire. Both sides are exceedingly well off.

They suffered a tragedy when their son, Ivan, born with a rare combination of cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy, died in February last year, aged six. The couple have two other children, Nancy, six, and four-year-old Arthur Elwen.

The Sun newspaper claimed the Cameron baby was conceived during Christmas last year. This was when “David was enjoying a rare few days off at home with his family in his constituency of Witney, Oxfordshire”.

In marked contrast to, say, India, where members of the public get excited if they see their senior leaders walk all by themselves, both the prime minister and Cameron have young families.

The news of Samantha’s pregnancy has inspired a rash of punning headlines.

The Sun led the way with “Wham bam! Sam Cam to be mam (she’ll need a new pram)”.

Cameron’s response to the headline was: “I didn’t know there were quite so many words that rhymed with Sam Cam.”

In The Times, it was “Sam Cam moves towards labour” and “Nappies at No 10”.

In The Guardian, it was “Samantha Cameron’s labour bombshell” and “Tories welcome bump in road to election”. The Daily Telegraph went with, “Does my bump look big in this?”, the Mirror with “Sam Cameron’s back to labour”; and The Independent with “Samantha’s baby blue”.

The Daily Mail was positively restrained with “Sam’s having a baby Cam”.

The Tory leader had been dropping hints for months about trying for a new baby. Last September he said: “I don’t believe Britain is over-populated. I’d quite like to add to it, personally, by quite possibly one, at some stage.”

Meeting a new mother and her baby in December, he said: “It makes me want another one.”

On ITV, he told Alan Titchmarsh, a well known broadcaster, barely a fortnight ago that the couple would have a baby “if the stork drops one off”.

Like the Camerons, Gordon Brown, 59, and his wife, Sarah, 46, have also experienced the heartbreak of losing a child. In 2002, when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, they lost their first-born baby, Jennifer Jane, aged just 10 days old after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

The couple now have two children, John Macaulay, six, and James Fraser, three, but the latter has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

If Cameron wins the general election expected on May 6, the new arrival will be only the third child born to a serving British prime minister in the last 160 years.

Leo, the Blairs’ fourth child, was born on May 20, 2000, while Francis Albert Rollo Russell, the third child of Lord John Russell, was born on July 11, 1849. It did Tony Blair’s image no harm to be seen with Leo in his arms from time to time.

There is a 12-year age gap between Leo and his sister Kathryn and the Blairs said they were shocked when Cherie, at 45, discovered she was expecting.

In her book, Speaking for Myself, Cherie revealed she had not packed her contraceptives when she and her husband stayed with the Queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland in 1999. This was because on a previous visit, the royal staff had embarrassed her by unpacking her case and laying out her pills on the bed.

Back in India, “86-Year Old N D Tiwari in a ‘Sex Scandal’ ”, about the former governor fighting a DNA battle, does not have the same ring. It makes him sound more like a dirty old man.