The Top 10: Fictional prime ministers

This all started when Hugh Grant raged against Theresa May on Twitter and a fawning fan said he should be prime minister. Alan Robertson asked for better choices than Grant’s character, David, in Love Actually.

1. Baldrick. Leader of the Adder Party in Blackadder: Back & Forth. Nominated by Sam White.

2. Jim Hacker. Yes, Prime Minister. Thanks to Sunder Katwala, Excel Pope and Elliot Kane.

3. Sir James Jaspers. “In the Marvel universe, he can warp and disrupt the laws of physics to make entire universes unsuitable for life. He was apparently designed to look like Terry-Thomas,” said Clerical Error.

4. Harriet Jones. Doctor Who. Nominated by Susie Symes and Mickus Dickus. “Only prime minister to thwart a Dalek invasion,” said Tim O’Kane. Harold Saxon, another from Doctor Who, one of the aliases of The Master, was nominated by Matt Branigan.

5. Harry Perkins. A Very British Coup, by Chris Mullin. “One of the founding myths of Corbynism,” said Tom Doran.

6. Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope. “Better suited to Treasury; lacks governing agenda,” said Sunder Katwala. “Best name,” said Peter A Russell.

7. Peter St John. From the Zenith comic strip in 2000 AD. “A hippy superhero who becomes a minister in the Thatcher government and later PM, in between vanquishing Nazi superbeings and Cthulhu-style monsters from other dimensions – also got a touch of the Heseltine about him,” said Twlldun.

8. Gladraeli Clampvulture. “The greatest name of any fictional prime minister,” said Alasdair Brooks. As played by Geoffrey Whitehead in the BBC Radio 4 Dickens parody Bleak Expectations; he seems to be distantly related to Ranulph Twizzleton Silly-Middle-Name Clampvulture.

9. Michael Stevens. Little Britain. From Robertson Barley and Richard Morris.

10. Francis Urquhart. House of Cards. Thanks to Peter Wass.

Professor Colin Talbot was puzzled, saying: “But we already have a fictional prime minister.”

Honourable mentions for Philip Downer and Matt Wheeldon, who nominated James Brown, in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, who has to resign after the Bright Young Things run wild at No 10, and his successor Walter Outrage, who is baffled about the conversations at cabinet meetings which he doesn’t understand. And for Andrew Ruddle, who supplied this, from Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Second Stain: “The one, austere, high-nosed, eagle-eyed, and dominant, was none other than the illustrious Lord Bellinger, twice premier of Britain.”

There is of course a long list on Wikipedia, although Allan Holloway pointed out one it misses: “Reginald Stevens, the new Labour PM, with whom Johnnie Byrne has a conflict in No Love for Johnnie, a novel written by Wilfred Fienburgh, Jeremy Corbyn’s predecessor but two as MP for Islington North, who was killed in a car crash in 1958; Stevens was played by Geoffrey Keen in the 1961 film of the book.”

This list was overtaken by events in Ukraine, where Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the actor who played a teacher who unexpectedly becomes president in a comedy, was elected president last month.

Next week: Diary entries, such as, “Shunt. Back. Legs. Nose. Bruises. Bugger” (Stirling Moss).

Coming soon: Things that won’t happen until after Brexit – one of which might be this repeatedly postponed Top 10, at this rate.

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk