Hello.

Today’s list is a quick list of things to remember about General Election polling day:

• It’s on Thursday (6th May).
• Polls open at 7am and close at 10pm.
• In many places there are local elections on the same day.
• If you’re eligible to vote, you should have had a polling card from your council telling you where your polling station is. If you haven’t had one and you think you should be able to vote, give them a call as soon as possible.
• You don’t need your polling card to vote, but it helps the polling station staff if you have it.
• If you have a postal vote and haven’t returned it yet, get it in the post asap. It has to arrive with the council before the polls close on Thursday.
• If you still have your postal vote on polling day, you can take it – sealed in its envelope – to your local polling station, or to your local council.
• When you vote, put a cross in the box for the candidate you want to vote for (or, for local elections where you have more than one vote, the boxes of the candidates you want to vote for). Don’t write anything else on the ballot paper or you risk it being spoilt.
• After the polls close, the ballot boxes will be taken to the count location. First, the council will check that the number of ballot papers in each ballot box matches the number of ballot papers given to voters. Then the votes will be counted.
• Most counts for the General Election are taking place on Thursday night. Get an estimate of when the result will be announced for your constituency from the Press Association.

As I’ve been working my way through the House of Cards trilogy recently (what better way to get in the mood for a General Election?), this week’s list is fictional British Prime Ministers from off of the telly. Minor spoilers for old dramas follow.

• From House of Cards:
  • Charles Henry Collingridge – Margaret Thatcher’s successor, who makes the mistake of leaving Francis Urquhart unpromoted
  • Francis Urquhart – F.U. himself, a ruthless right-wing PM brought brilliantly to life by Ian Richardson
• Maureen Graty – the British PM who appears briefly in the sixth season of The West Wing, played by Pamela Salem – and as far as I know, fact fans, she’s the only actor from either Doctor Who or Blake’s 7 to have appeared in The West Wing
• Michael Phillips – Robert Bathurst’s occupant of Number 10 in the BBC sitcom My Dad’s the Prime Minister
• Tom Davis – second PM (and the first named) in The Thick of It, although he’s not seen on screen
• From the Doctor Who universe:
  • “Jeremy” – the PM during The Green Death – assumed to be former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe
  • “Madam” – there’s a female PM on the phone in Terror of the Zygons – possibly Shirley Williams
  • Joseph Green – MP for Hartley Dale and acting PM in World War Three, although he’s actually Jocrassa Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen in disguise
  • Harriet Jones – Penelope Wilton’s MP for Flydale North, she is Prime Minister in The Christmas Invasion
  • Harold Saxon – John Simm as the Master, perhaps having benefited from the Doctor’s quiet overthrowing of Harriet Jones
  • Brian Green – played by Nicholas Farrell (also of To Play the King), he was PM during Torchwood: Children of Earth
• Kevin Pork – in Whoops Apocalypse, portrayed by Peter Jones
• Ros Pritchard – Jane Horrocks’s eponymous character in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (which prompted a lot of discussion on Lib Dem Voice)
• From The Pallisers:
  • Joshua Monk – Liberal PM in Trollope’s The Duke’s Children, played by Bryan Pringle
  • The Duke of Omnium – from Trollope’s The Prime Minster, played by Philip Latham
• Michael Stevens – Anthony Head’s PM in Little Britain
• Harry Perkins – the star of A Very British Coup, Ray McAnally’s socialist PM is almost the diametrical opposite of Francis Urquhart (the book was by Chris Mullin, subsequently a Labour MP himself but standing down this year)
• Jim Hacker – last but by no means least, Paul Eddington takes the title role in Yes, Prime Minister, one of the best sitcoms ever made

And here’s a fact I stumbled across while checking the information in this list – the replica House of Commons often seen in TV dramas since the 1980s was built for the ITV adaptation of First Among Equals and is now owned by TV writer Paul Abbott.

It was only a few years ago that I first heard of Jacques Brel. He was a Belgian singer-songwriter, famed in France for his complex, poetic songs and energetic performances. Although his songs were nearly all in French, they have been widely translated into English – the best known are Scott Walker’s Jackie (Spotify link), an accurate reflection of Brel’s original, and Terry Jacks’s Seasons in the Sun, which is, erm, less so – the original, Le Moribond, has a markedly darker emphasis.

Scott Walker recorded English versions of a number of Brel’s songs, as did David Bowie. Compare versions of Amsterdam by Walker, Brel and Bowie

Anyhoo, the reason I’m writing about Brel now is to plug Radio 2’s three-part documentary about his life and music, Behind the Brel. You’ve missed episode 1, I’m afraid, but episode 2 is on the iPlayer and episode 3 will be on Radio 2 on Tuesday night at 11.30pm. At the time of writing, obviously. If you’re in the far distant future, you may need to hunt the space internet for a copy of visit your local space library.

You can of course read more about Jacques Brel on teh Wikipedia.

Well, as a way of making sure I post at least once a week, this series is doing its job so far – even if I haven’t had time to post in between lists.

This week’s list of celebrities and other persons of note who have cropped up in my family history research. Some of them are distant relatives by marriages (and have been mentioned on this blog before); the others are direct relations.

• Tony Benn – Not news to long time readers of this blog as it’s been mentioned before but the Howellses and the Benns are joined by marriage, as recorded on thepeerage.com. By virtue of this marriage, I can also include
• Hilary Benn, and
• Margaret Rutherford – her father having changed their name from Benn after murdering his father…
• John Edward Emile (Von) Holtorp – Another relative by marriage I’ve mentioned before (his son married my great-great-aunt), Holtorp was a member of the General Council of the International, alongside Karl Marx.
• Frank Bough – yes, that Frank Bough. His wife Nesta (née Howells) is my third cousin once removed.
• Rees Howells – Nesta’s great-uncle and the founder of the Bible College of Wales. I talked a bit about him in this podcast, and he’s on Wikipedia too.
• Richard John Blackler – My great-great-uncle and the founder of Blacker’s, a large department store that operated for about 80 years in the centre of Liverpool. George Harrison briefly trained as an electrician there in the 1960s. The old store building is now host to a number of smaller outlets including a Wetherspoons pub called The Richard John Blackler.

Got any interesting/notorious/celebrity relatives? Do share in the comments 🙂