Thursday, February 16, 2006

Bird of liberty challenge

Tonight I will be going to the St Albans leadership hustings less to hear the candidates and more out of uxoriousness since my dear wife is going to be in the chair, keeping the chaps in order.

I don't really enjoy hustings meetings, which are too dry and worthy with predictable questions and very few good jokes. Perhaps we should have a hustings in the style of Reeves and Mortimer's 'Shooting Stars' with the candidates competing in the 'vibrosprout challenge' to see who becomes leader.

Part of me is tempted to find some particularly annoying, offbeat or surreal question to liven things up, but I suspect I won't catch the chair's eye.

3 comments:

Liberal Neil said...
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Liberal Neil said...

Have you got George Daws lined up to do the scores?

Mark Valladares said...

Iain,

I agree with you that hustings are generally dull in a worthy sort of way (and I've been to dozens as Returning Officer). For the Europeans last time, I instituted a slightly varied format whereby the candidates had five minutes to answer four rounds of questions but answered them one at a time in rotation. As RO, I deducted the time taken for each question from their five minutes and kept a white board updated with the amount of time they had left. Complex, but entertaining.

The Chair helps too. Evan Harris and Sandra Gidley cracked jokes and made the thing more fun (Chris Huhne will have experienced their chairing style, having been one of the contestants). It does come down to the confidence of the Chair though...

Hope that it goes well all the same...