Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel
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Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel was a candidate in a 1981 United Kingdom parliamentary by-election.
On 1 October 1981, the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Crosby constituency, Sir Graham Page, died. A by-election was called, to be held in the following month, on 26 November. Nine candidates stood, including John Desmond Lewis, a 22-year-old student from Hayes in Middlesex.
Lewis, President of the Cambridge University branch of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, decided to change his name to Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel, the outrageous moniker of a character in a sketch from the popular BBC television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the sketch, "Election Night Special", the character by that name stands in a local election as the "Silly Party" candidate.
When the results were declared, Lewis – referred to by the Returning Officer as "Mr Tarquin Biscuit-Barrel" – placed fifth, with 223 votes. He finished ahead of four other candidates; one of those four was John Kennedy, a student who had been suspended from Middlesex Polytechnic after a sit-in over demands for a college nursery. Kennedy had tried to stop Lewis from standing by mounting a legal challenge to Lewis's candidacy. Kennedy finished with 31 votes, tying for last place with Donald Potter, the "Humanitarian Candidate" and founder of a "lonely hearts" club.
Former Labour MP Shirley Williams won the by-election for the newly-formed SDP-Liberal Alliance with 28,118 votes (49 percent of the vote), overturning a previous Conservative majority of 19,272. [1].
[edit] References
- Chapman et al, Monty Python's Flying Circus: Just the Words Volume 1, London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990 (ISBN 0-7493-0226-7).
