One down...

...so now they are six. And thank God the two liberals are still left standing, with the woman, Amanda, who ‘felt safer under Thatcher’ being sent packing. But there’s still that ghastly anti-immigrant chap, who I now know is called Rodney, who was advocating the castration of paedophiles. It was even too much for Kelvin McKenzie. But I suspect that he will probably make it down to the last three, with the judges all united against him and noisy (although isolated) support in the studio.

Julie, the single mother who makes a virtue of being single class, did well again, while Eileen, the single-issue campaigner against phone masts continued to do her stuff. The young Asian candidate, Irfan, did well and showed McKenzie up by going into detail about the problems facing the NHS, in particular bed blocking.

And wheelchair-bound Kevin sounded surprisingly like a Lib Dem when he advocated a local income tax – surely the party hasn’t got to him? His only setback was when he was asked to set out how it would be done in detail – not something easy to do in 30 seconds or less. While I doubt he has any worked out details, I know that based on Lib Dem figures it’s erroneous to suggest that everyone would pay less; some will pay more, as I discovered to my cost last year when a voter said he wouldn’t vote for me on that basis.

After canvassing the night before, last night they were taken to the studio for radio interviews and a meeting with former Independent MP Martin Bell and current one, Richard Taylor. It was quite entertaining to see Amanda struggling to explain her ideas on air – I can just imagine her being on the other side, giving the professional politicians a hard time. Now she had to take it!

Finally, it’s still troubling me that almost all of them seem to adopt what they think is typical politicians pose during their presentations and question answering sessions. It’s as if they can’t be entirely natural. The only one who doesn’t is Julie – but I can’t decide whether her easy-going manner is natural or put on.

Time will tell.