Barking Up the Wrong Bush

19 April 1987: The first-ever appearance of The Simpsons on television, in a short in The Tracey Ullman Show, "Good Night".
8 November 1988: George H.W. Bush defeats Michael Dukakis in that year's Presidential election.
20 January 1989: Bush is inaugurated as the 41st President of the United States.
14 May 1989: The last-ever Tracey Ullman Simpsons short, "TV Simpsons", is aired.
17 December 1989: The first ever full-length episode of the half-hour Simpsons series, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", is broadcast.

Genomvote

Immediately before their coverage of the 1997 General Election, BBC One ran something rather interesting - a repeat of the election-themed Blackadder the Third episode Dish and Dishonesty. It is a rare example of the BBC's mainstream channel tying into an election on the day - the only time they've attempted to do so since is 2010, when Have I Got News for You was moved out of the Friday night slot it had occupied for 19 years by scheduling genius Jay Hunt and plonked on Thursdays, with the stated reason that it would allow them to do an election special on the day Britain went to the polls. However, on the actual day of recording itself, they realised that if they went ahead with this plan the episode would be broadcast before the polls had closed, meaning the panellists would be forbidden from expressing any opinionated comments about the election. Realising this was less than ideal, the episode's recording date was hurriedly shifted to Friday morning, for broadcast later that evening. (This tight turnaround is also used by whichever Radio 4 is running at 6.30pm on Fridays at the time of the election - indeed, The News Quiz has often recorded on Friday morning for episodes during the campaign, rather than just the episode immediately after the results.)

Have I Got Major Political Upheaval for You

28 September 1990: The first ever episode of Have I Got News for You is broadcast on BBC Two.
28 November 1990: Margaret Thatcher leaves office, twelve days after the first series of HIGNFY has finished its run. The show's official board game later invites fans to "draw their own conclusions".

The Last Clegg

One of the most dramatic moments of the UK's 2017 General Election was the unseating of former Deputy PM Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam. In an almost poetic moment, just minutes later his former deputy Vince Cable, defeated in 2015, regains his Twickenham seat.

The BBC's coverage of this moment is one of unintentional beauty: fading from Clegg's speech to the declaration at Cable's count, and accompanied by Dimbleby's sage commentary: "One goes down, and as one goes down, the other one comes up".

Sky News allow Clegg to get to the end of his speech without cutting away, but seemingly didn't get the memo about the Twickenham declaration, as Cable's return is reduced to a chyron whilst they're looking at some not terribly helpful live feeds from the Islington and Maidenhead counts. (I also find it amusing how Sky feel the need to highlight anyone you've ever heard of holding their seat, no matter how safe, but I guess they're going for a more niche audience than the BBC.)

ITV do something similar. The presenters seem to be talking about something completely different over the live feed of the Hallam declaration, and say there is a "rumour" Clegg has lost his seat and they're not sure if he's going to make it back whilst the Labour candidate is giving his victory speech, but this is ITV's own stream and the picture and sound hopelessly out of sync. They do then proceed to talk to David Davis, though, which is never a good idea, and don't mention Twickenham at all. A lovely bit of poetry, but only the BBC really manage to capture it. (It could have been even more poetic - in 2015 only about 15 minutes separated their two declarations, which were vice-versa on that occasion.)

Momentum or Maomentum? Hat Edition

Been a while since we've done one of these (you can find the previous editions here and here), but Hatgate has provided me with an opportunity I couldn't resist. The following quotes are all genuinely taken from Twitter; some are the actual thoughts of Jeremy Corbyn supporters, others are satirical pisstakes. Which is which? Answers at the bottom of the post, as ever.

Exit (Fashion) Pollice

(Look, if you want to try and come up with a better title for this article, then be my guest.)

One of the biggest moments of a UK election night is when the exit poll drops, and all the parties who don't like the result argue about how it's obviously wrong for hours until the actual results show it was right all along. The burning question: is there an article that comments on the graphics and accuracy of some of the BBC's exit polls over the years? There is now!

A Table Comparing Tenures of Prime Ministers With Those of Doctor Whos

Tenure	Doctor Who	Prime Minister
November 1963 to October 1964	William Hartnell	Alec Douglas-Home
October 1964 to October 1966		Harold Wilson
October 1966 to June 1969	Patrick Troughton
January 1970 to June 1970	Jon Pertwee
June 1970 to March 1974		Edward Heath
March to June 1974		Harold Wilson
June 1974 to April 1976	Tom Baker
April 1976 to May 1979		James Callaghan
May 1979 to March 1981		Margaret Thatcher
March 1981 to March 1984	Peter Davison
March 1984 to December 1986	Colin Baker
September 1987 to November 1989	Sylvester McCoy
January 1990 to November 1990	Sylvester McCoy (series off-air, technically still incumbent)
November 1990 to April 1996		John Major
May 1996	Paul McGann
May 1996 to May 1997	Paul McGann (series off-air, technically still incumbent)
May 1997 to March 2005		Tony Blair
March to June 2005	Christopher Eccleston
June 2005 to June 2007	David Tennant
June 2007 to January 2010		Gordon Brown
January 2010 to May 2010	Matt Smith
May 2010 to December 2013		David Cameron
January 2014 to July 2016	Peter Capaldi
July 2016 to December 2017		Theresa May

Momentum or Maomentum? Copeland Edition

Back in December I first published the game of Momentum or Maomentum?, in which I found various quotes on Twitter and challenged readers of this blog to sort the thoughts of genuine Jeremy Corbyn supporters from satirical piss-takes of those supporters.

I’ve updated that post a few times since then, but last night’s by-election has given me plenty of new material, so here’s a special Copeland Edition. Answers follow at the bottom of the page.

UNIT: Silenced

Big Finish Productions are a company best known for making audio dramas, most of which are based on licensed properties. They’ve done works based on The Avengers, Dan Dare, Dark Shadows, The Prisoner and Survivors to name but a few, but they’re probably best known for their Doctor Who line. Until recently this was limited to the original 1963-89 run (commonly referred to as the ‘classic series’) as well as most of the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann, but about two years ago this changed with the announcement of their first releases featuring characters and concepts from the series’ 2005 relaunch. This first series was UNIT: The New Series, starring Jemma Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver as Kate Stewart and Petronella Osgood (recurring characters in the eras of Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s Doctors), and it’s the third boxset, UNIT: Silenced (released in November 2016), that’s under discussion today.

Hope

Yesterday was a quite remarkable day, and everybody involved in the marches across the world should feel incredibly proud of their achievements. It was the first day that I, and a great many other people, were able to feel hopeful about the future in a long time. But while I don't doubt for a second that there will be days like that again... there will also be days like Friday.

So I thought I'd make a list of things that happened yesterday. And hopefully remind us that, as a wise man once said, "out of their evil must come something good."

Yes, We Know Who You Are

There’s something unusual about the 2005-10 period of Doctor Who, when Russell T Davies was its executive producer and head writer. (Well, there’s probably lots of unusual things about it, but this blog post is only interested in one of them.) Classic stories from the 1970s implied that in the near future, Jeremy Thorpe or Shirley Williams were Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the 1988 Sylvester McCoy story The Happiness Patrol features a thinly-veiled parody of Margaret Thatcher as the villain and, after Davies was gone, Matt Smith’s Doctor would meet Winston Churchill on a number of occasions (Ian McNiece’s portrayal of Churchill is now the subject of a spin-off series of audio dramas courtesy of Big Finish Productions). But in Davies’ era, the Doctor actually meets the Prime Minister of the day - or at least, the person who’s meant to be the Prime Minister of the day in the Who universe. In fact, he meets several of them. So, then, here we have a chronicle of all the PMs of the time and an attempt to work out a rough political timeline of the United Kingdom in the Doctor’s world.

Momentum or Maomentum?

The following were all genuinely posted on Twitter. Some are satirical; others are the genuine thoughts of Corbyn supporters. But can you sort the members of Momentum from those of Maomentum? Answers are to be found at the bottom of the page.