The Swingometer

Politics The BBC Archive has posted material related to the election night swingometer with plenty of clips of past glories.

My favourite is this discourse from a couple of weeks before my birth in 1974 in which Sue Lawley looking like a sexy young Doctor Who companion from the period, casually, one hand in her pocket, explains the results of the overnight poll.

Full clip is here and you can't tell me something hasn't been lost in the wizbit pacing of the new news. Especially the final moment and the smirk. Now it's Jeremy Vine in a holodeck waving his arms around.

Another draw is the list of candidate names which demonstrate that all of the fiction figures that turn up on comedy series from the Python to The Day Today, all have their roots in fact.

I've listed them after the jump because they do sound like the stuff of another era and I really can't believe that these people existed. Especially Margaret Thatcher.


Tom Ironmonger
Milly Miller
Barnie Hayhoe
John Loverage
Robert Carr
Margaret Thatcher
Edward Heath
Bob Mellish
Peter Shaw
Ian Mikardo
Evan Looward
Monty Woodhouse
Robin Corbett
Peggy Fenner
Shirley Williams
Joan Lester
Michael Hestletine
Norman Sinjin Stevens

And ... twenty-five year old Helene Middleweek who is now Helene Valerie Hayman or Baroness Hayman, Lord Speaker of the House of Lords.