All the recent talk of people going 'to hell with it' and voting for celebrity candidates in the next general election is worrying, despite Esther Rantzen's sterling attempt to put paid to the whole idea with her embarrassing performance on Question Time. Celebs simply aren't suited to office - they neither know nor care about anything other than themselves. That is, in most cases, the main reason they've become celebrities.
There is a kind of public office, though, to which the stars of stage and screen are perfectly suited: the kind no-one knew existed in the first place. Called things like High Sheriffs and Lord Lieutenants, they don't appear to do much apart from turn up on the news occasionally in furry robes to mug at local businessmen or kids in a newly-built youth centre. ('Sounds like Gordon Brown! LOL!')
Celebs make ideal candidates for this job - not much paperwork, lots of getting out and about and pressing the flesh, and those robes, darling! The High Sheriff of Surrey was the benchmark for celeb dignitary action for ages, with both Richard Stilgoe and Penelope Keith holding that unaccountably sexy-sounding office over the past few years.
But now there's a new challenger, as we hear Eddie Yates off Corrie has been made Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight! This is, of course, the best celebrity political appointment made thus far, and we wish Mr G Hughes (if that really is his name) all the best carrying out his many ceremonial duties, which include:
- Brewing bitter in Hilda Ogden's bathtub
- Failing to flog white goods of dubious provenance at the bar of the Rovers
- Turning up fresh from the nick desperate for somewhere to kip with iffy mate 'Monkey'
- Covering a shortfall in hookey wallpaper with an equally dodgy alpine 'muriel'
- Scanning the classified ads in the Weatherfield Gazette for 'investment opportunities'
- Running a book on whether or not Annie Walker will pass her driving test
- Rescuing a trapped budgie from Mavis Reilly's chimney
- Burning the coq-au-vin at Ken Barlow's pensioners' supper
- Trying to get Bet Lynch to sell him 2/3 of a pint of bitter after he's had his benefits cut
- Selling cash and carry booze out of drinking hours from an ice cream van
- Pretending he lives in Mike Baldwin's flat to impress birds he's pulled over the CB radio
- Storing Stan Ogden's vintage tandem in an abandoned house which is promptly knocked down while he's having a swift half in the pub over the road
- Winning the council's 'cleanest dustcart' contest despite a knobbling attempt from Fred Gee
- Trouncing Alf Roberts in a slimming contest
I think he'll do juuuuuust fine.
