Biscuits are not for idiots. This you can be sure of. I put it to you that if you posed a question to the twenty-two most respected academics in the country about which is the 'best biscuit in the world' you'd find yourself at the heart of a heated debate. Clever folk like biscuits too. It's one of those testy topics that gets people frothing at the mouth convinced that one way is the only way and espousing opinion as fact. Other examples are: what's the best coffee chain? And what's the best way to brew a cuppa? Milk in first or last?
I, of course, have an answer for each of these questions:
1) The chocolate Hobnob
2) None, they're all foul. The lady at Ascot station and the guys at the Fair Trade coffee stall in Vauxhall make the best coffee in all the land
3) Milk first, obviously, you reprobate
There's another one too: FPTP or AV?
In order to demonstrate AV on the Today Programme this morning - An Idiots Guide to AV, they called it - Norman Smith with a little help from Dr Alan Renwick, author of A Citizen's Guide to Electoral Reform, asked twenty-two MPs what their favourite biscuits were. And our representatives' first choices were as follows:
Chocolate Digestive - 10
Garibaldi - 1
Jaffa Cake - 4
Jammy Dodger - 3
Shortbread - 3
Rich Tea - 1
As no biscuit achieved the necessary 50% of votes in order to win, Tristram Hunt's first choice, the Garibaldi, alongside the Rich Tea biscuit (as usual, the last in the barrel) were both eliminated. And the second preferences of the voters for the eliminated biscuits were redistributed:
Chocolate Digestive - 11
Jaffa Cake - 5
Jammy Dodger - 3
Shortbread - 3
Hurrah! A victorious biscuit. May the Chocolate Digestive reign supreme forever among other mere 'unfavoured' biscuits in the corridors of power. OK, so perhaps not forever, that would be undemocratic and stuff.
Interestingly, the result of the First Past the Post system was the same. All hail the Chocolate Digestive and its Mother Mary, McVities.
What this means is that the world probably won't end regardless of which way you vote at the upcoming referendum. But you will probably be called stupid at some stage.
I for one am going to vote 'yes' because I am an avid supporter of the Chocolate Hobnob... wait, what?
A Citizen's Guide to Electoral Reform is available now, priced £9.99.
***Come and see us at the London Book Fair, we'll be on stand J205***