Corbyn’s secret past as leader of the Smurfs
11 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT JEREMY CORBYN
1 For the past 45 years, Jeremy Corbyn has been a member of the Highbury and Islington Morris Dancing Association.
‘We don’t have a lead dancer,’ he says. ‘ We’re a democratic organisation.’ Every other Saturday, he can be seen jigging to the tune Your Land Is our Land on the pavement outside The Fox & Goose in Upper Street.
2 Corbyn formerly played bass guitar f or Seventies group Hawkwind, and can be heard on their hit song Silver Machine.
Corbyn explained to a reporter from music magazine Melody Maker at the time that the title’s silver machine was a motorbike produced by the Triumph Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative.
He himself has never seen the need to drive, preferring to ride to and from Westminster on a penny farthing.
3 AS A young man, Corbyn auditioned f or the role of Keith in Mike Leigh’s nuts In May, but failed to land it.
‘They very much liked my beard, but thought the rest of me didn’t quite match up,’ he confesses.
4 HE CONTINUES to be district chair of t he PFA ( Penny Farthing Association) and has vowed to expand l i nks with international branches of the PFA, particularly those in Venezuela and Cuba. Should he become Labour leader, he has vowed that the penny farthing will feature prominently in the party’s radical new transport policy.
‘The M25 or London orbital will be reserved for the exclusive use of penny farthing users,’ says one adviser. ‘This policy will have the long-term effect of easing the flow of traffic, cutting down on harmful emissions and boosting british industry in the under-resourced sector of penny farthing production.’
5 Corbyn regularly plays golf with Vanessa redgrave and Arthur Scargill. ‘We don’t go in for any of that who-gets-their-ball-into-the-hole-first nonsense,’ he explains. ‘Instead, we take turns at hitting all the three balls, so that no one individual is invidiously singled out as winner or loser.’
6 OF THE four Labour leadership candidates, Corbyn is the only one to have said the words ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ in recent weeks.
When all the candidates were asked on BBC radio 4’s Today programme whether they would wrap up well when the weather got colder, only Corbyn replied with an unequivocal: ‘no.’ of the other three, Yvette Cooper said she wasn’t prepared to answer a hypothetical question, Liz Kendall insisted she was going to apply her values to that question as and when circumstances dictated, and Andy burnham said he truly believed a j ersey or cardigan would have a massive contribution to make, but he wasn’t going to pre-empt any inquiry.
7 on HIS first state visit to Washington as prime minister, Corbyn plans to wear a freshly pressed T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. ‘ That’s because they’re indisputably the most practical form of clothing if you’re riding on a penny farthing,’ he explains.
He has not yet decided upon an appropriate gift f or t he President of the U.S., but is toying with either a draught excluder or a sleeping bag.
8 HE Never goes on holiday without a placard to hold on the beach.
Last year, Corbyn took one reading Say no To Trident’ to display on the beach in Cornwall. The year before he took ‘ Free School Meals for Inuits,’ to Spain. So far, his campaign for the right to unfurl placards during all national and international air flights has proved unsuccessful.
9 HE IS chair of the brotherhood And Sisterhood of bearded Persons, a radical breakaway group from the long-standing NBA (national beardie Association).
A long-time campaigner against beardism in all areas of society, he insists that the combined power of the international razor-making multi-nationals is stifling all proper debate about beards.
Aged ten, he i nsisted upon wearing an artificial beard to school. Last year, he shaved off his beard, only to discover another beard nestling beneath it.
10 IT IS not generally known that Corbyn is the guiding force behind the Seventies TV sensation, the Smurfs.
In the guise of their bowler-hatted leader Father Abraham (pictured), he helped take the essential Smurf philosophy as far afield as Germany, Sweden and Japan.
‘no, I’m not necessarily saying we should all be small blue creatures living in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest,’ he told journalists in February 1978. ‘but it is surely a condition to which all human beings should aspire.’
11 In An outspoken attack on Corbyn, former Labour leader Tony blair recently urged the Labour Party ‘to remember how to connect with ordinary people’.
blair was then led away by six bodyguards to board an Airstream jet to Kazakhstan, where he gave a Power-Point presentation to President nazarbayev on the importance of making as much money in as short a time as possible.