Forum Topic

Stonehouse

ITV are doing a great job with this, as is Matthew MacFadyen with his fake receding hairline and dad bod.I remember his faking his own death and the subsequent fall out. It's a story that you couldn't make up without being told it was too far fetched.Why do so many men wildly over-estimate their own abilities? And why do so many of them go into politics?

Susan Kelly ● 1356d26 Comments

Why do so many men wildly over-estimate their own abilities? And why do so many of them go into politics?Maybe Liz Truss will have an insight? Some of whatever it is must have rubbed onto her :)

Andrew Jones ● 1356d

"Why do so many men wildly over-estimate their own abilities? And why do so many of them go into politics?"Perhaps if you offered to sponsor a psychiatric session for Jeremy Corbyn you might get some answers.

Richard Greenhough ● 1356d

I think you're confusing psychotherapy and psychiatry. Perhaps you need therapy for your obsession with Corbyn.

Robert Fish ● 1356d

Yes, Liz Truss is an outlier. The exception that tests the rule.

Susan Kelly ● 1356d

'Perhaps you need therapy for your obsession with Corbyn.'Ha, ha, ha..............

Vanessa Smith ● 1356d

Going back to the original post, I have not watched it yet, but a friend did and pointed out that Harold Wilson was shown smoking a cigar.  A cigar for goodness sake!  Anyone old enough knows what he smoked, and it wasn't a cigar....  put me right off watching it. A second fact/urban myth is that apparently Reginald Perrin was based on Stonehouse.

Anne Brown ● 1355d

I thought it was excellent, and look forward to seeing tonight's episode. As for Wilson's smoking habits, he is shown with a pipe in the first episode, but subsequently with a cigar. I wouldn't be at all surprised if researchers found that the cigar was his smoke of choice, but the pipe was waved around in public in order to display his 'common man' credentials. Isn't that, after all, how most politicians behave? Image is all.

Colin Jordan ● 1355d

From what I’ve read, Colin is spot on.  Wilson preferred cigars but not wanting to appear upper class only smoked them in private.  The pipe, like the Gannex raincoat, were part of his crafted public image.  I think ‘Stonehouse’ got this right.

Alastair Banton ● 1355d

In The Crown the character playing Wilson said he preferred cigars in private but smoked a pipe in public because of the image.  Maybe this was true or it could be one TV programme copying another!

Michael Robinson ● 1355d

Possibly, but the idea of Wilson’s preference for cigars over pipes was widespread before The Crown.

Alastair Banton ● 1355d

Did either programme also mention that he was known as the worst PM since Lord North ?

Richard Greenhough ● 1355d

Wilson was indeed a cigar smoker. They have that correct, but there are plenty of inaccuracies in the programme. But it’s done for laughs so perhaps people shouldn’t view it as a historical documentary. Apart from Stonehouse himself and one of his daughters all the key players in the family are still alive, including his ex-wife Barbara who is now 92.

Simon Hayes ● 1355d

Greenho' you sound obsessed with Corbyn? Get over it, you won!

Basil Finnis ● 1355d

So would you also say that Jonesy is obsessed with Liz Truss ?

Richard Greenhough ● 1355d

So who is the most obsessed? Easy to check. I did a search for references to posts on this forum containing "Corbyn" and "Truss", copied and pasted the results into Excel, a pivot table to count the authors of the post and the top 10 results are:
So not even close, Richard Greenhough is waaaaay more obsessed about Corbyn than anyone else and over 4x more obsessed than even the number 1 poster about Truss.

Michael Robinson ● 1355d

Worse than Anthony Eden? Wilson passed several reforming bills and importantly kept us out of the Vietnam war .Also we won the World Cup !

David Burke ● 1355d

I used to sometimes go to this cheap, formica tabled caff in Victoria (my home town) and Harold Wilson was often there.Tiny little man who wanted to be spotted.

Sarah Vickers ● 1355d

My personal memories of Harold Wilson were the laughs he and his great rival, Ted Heath gave the nation courtesy of the impersonator Mike Yarwood.Also, him sitting astride a big rock, pipe in hand on his annual holiday in the Isles of Scilly, with faithful Paddy, his Labrador Retriever forever by his side.Shame about Harold's front teeth, they couldn't have brought him many votes.

Denis I. Fox ● 1355d

I think Colin is right about the cigar/pipe thing. The pipe was a prop.

Susan Kelly ● 1355d

I suspect that a trawl for references to Harold Wilson would reveal a similar preponderance of posts by RG. Poor fellow can't help it.

Robert Fish ● 1355d

Wilson is too common a name and I am certainly not obsessed enough to actually read the posts - a search, copy and paste into a spreadsheet is the extent of it.An on that topic, 35 Richard Greenhough references to "Corbean" can be added to the list of "Corbyn" posts.

Michael Robinson ● 1355d

I recall that he used to fiddle with his pipe when asked difficult questions to give him time to think of a convincing reply.

Richard Greenhough ● 1354d

that is hilarious!

Anne Brown ● 1354d

"So not even close, Richard Greenhough is waaaaay more obsessed about Corbyn than anyone else and over 4x more obsessed than even the number 1 poster about Truss."Ahhh, but how many of Richard's Corbyn/Corbean posts were intended as a diversion away from the Trouble with Truss posts?

Andrew Jones ● 1354d

Perhaps you would like to do a survey of mentions of "Boris", "Bojo", "Johnson" (and other variants) and see who heads the table for that ? After all, Liz was a relative latecomer to the obsession charts.

Richard Greenhough ● 1354d

You forgot to include references to "Old Jeremiah".

Richard Greenhough ● 1354d