IS BIG GRAVY JUMPING ON THE GRAVY TRAIN?

It's June 2002, and Hartlepool's Labour MP, Peter Mandelson goes bananas upon hearing the news that a candidate whose main election manifesto proposal is free quantities of the nutritious fruit for all primary age schoolchildren, the town's first (and only) directly elected mayor. His name is Stuart Drummond, and one of the key skills he brings to this important role is his ability to perform in public. That's as H'Angus, the monkey mascot for Hartlepool United Football Club!

More monkey business in Hartlepool

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

Go anywhere in the world and you can't fail to find someone who is familiar with the Hartlepool monkey hanging legend. From Barcelona to Buenos Aries folk have heard how the good people of the town hung the poor animal thinking it was a French spy.

But there's another bit of monkey business that Hartlepool has become associated with. It was

Stuart Drummond, Mayor of Hartlepool
in 2002.

an event that totally changed the way I view politics and people. A turning point in my life.

The day that Hartlepool United's football mascot won the poll and became one of the very first directly elected mayors in the country, taught me how the political system can be used by people for their own selfish agendas. It also led to my sacking but we'll put that part of it on the back burner.

When H'Angus the Monkey decided to throw his banana into the ring and stand for election to the £60,000 a year post, it was done as a joke. The Hartlepool United football club chairman paid his election deposit and supporters of the club and a local rugby club threw themselves behind his campaign.

Stuart Drummond, the man in the monkey suit, promised free bananas for all school kids in the town and submitted an interesting curriculum vitae to the local newspaper of which I was editor, boasting of a degree and proficiency in a number of languages. It did make us wonder why he was working in a call centre on a pittance but hey, did it matter, he was a joke.

As it turned out it did matter. He won.

Peter Mandelson, MP for Hartlepool in June, 2002. 

The story made television news and every national newspaper in the country. Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson was incandescent with rage as the vote was announced. He ordered that the television cameras be switched off as he turned his anger towards the Hartlepool Mail's deputy editor Neil Hunter. Such was Mandelson's perceived power and their lack of bottle that the cameras were switched off.

Mandelson's very close friend in Hartlepool, local businessman Leo Gillen was expected to win handsomely and Mandy had backed his Labour protégé to the hilt.

The following morning as I flipped between doing television and radio interviews and putting together the paper, I received a call from Brian Dinsdale, Hartlepool Council's chief executive. His voice was trembling on the phone. He wanted to know if it was possible for me to go over to see him.

Brian was a superb chief executive, a really nice bloke and we'd enjoyed a good working relationship. I could sense he was already in the midst of a damage limitation exercise.

I went over and Brian met me and led me to his office. He wanted a big favour. He wanted me to meet the new mayor and sow the seeds for a working relationship. I did as he asked but the working relationship bit was never going to work.

Brian led me into the huge Mayoral office and at one end was an ordinary looking youngish guy with crooked teeth and a stare like a rabbit in the headlights. The chief exec left us to it.

Stuart Drummond was one of the most ordinary and least inspirational blokes I'd ever met. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was still in shock but he had little to say, had little personality and was just, well very, very dull.

I was asked by a couple of Sunday newspapers to write articles explaining how Drummond had won. It was easy to do. Drummond, the man in the monkey suit, hadn't won. A bloke called 'none of the above' had won. There was no question. The seemingly savvy voters of Hartlepool had rejected all of the politicians. They preferred a joke candidate promising free bananas to a politician. They'd have preferred a steaming dog turd on top of a cream cake to a politician.

Brian Dinsdale had shown shrewd judgement if the voters hadn't. The lifeboats had been prepared. In no time at all him, his deputy and the head of planning left the council. I won't call them rats because they were all great people. But they were certainly leaving a sinking ship.

The whole affair was dubbed Monkey Business and it all came flooding back to me this week as I did lots of digging as I'd been tipped off a plot was being hatched for more monkey business in Hartlepool. But this time it isn't a monkey man who is trying to go for the "none of the above vote" it's a bloke called Derek Bilton who is popularly known as Big Gravy. Don't ask me why he's called that. I have no idea.

The first thing that alerted me was on a Facebook group called Putting Hartlepool First. The administrator had decided to have a snap poll asking who people would vote for should there be an election called. There were three choices, the intensely disliked Labour MP Iain Wright, Derek 'big gravy' Bilton and me. To be honest I was really pissed off. I hadn't been asked, but as it was a bit of harmless fun I let it lie I. Spite of the fact that I've campaigned for more than ten years for people not to vote.

After a while there appeared a stream of fairly moronic shouts for Gravy! Big G etc. The obvious question sprang to my mind: who the fuck is Derek Bilton? I had no idea so I began asking about. I also sent a message to the site administrator and chairman of Putting Hartlepool First, David Riddle, simply asking WTF is Derek Bilton. The response was swift. "Just a lad from the town. Nice enough bloke. I just like him because he has about three thousand friends on Facebook".

It made no sense at all to me. More digging required. It didn't take me long to discover that

Mr Riddle and Derek Bilton go together like roast beef and big gravy. They are friends, they shared a house together when they were at university and had even been discussing Derek jumping on a real Big Gravy Train - the political one.

I was annoyed that young Mr Riddle was actually behaving like a politician and being, as political commentators call it, "economical with the truth". I confronted him and in fairness to this pleasant, though politically misguided young man, he came clean, admitted everything and apologised.

Time for more digging. Didn't take me long to discover that the Big Gravy Train would be making its first stop in the Owton Manor Ward with a plan being hatched for Bilton to stand  as an independent in the May council elections against the sitting Labour councillor Marjorie 'mad dog' Richardson.

The only obstacle to this cunning plan is a prickly one: the leaders of the Putting Hartlepool First Group and mad dog, one of their sitting councillors, know nothing about it. Indeed, the ones I spoke to about this week had never even heard of Derek Bilton, let alone knew about the political master plan.

But there's more. I'm reliably informed that there’s more under cover plotting going on to set up Bilton to run for MP.

So what does all this prove? Politics is a dirty business. Yeah, we knew that. Politicians and political wannabes don't tell the truth. Yep, we knew that as well. No, the real lesson in this is that wherever there is a political vacuum there will always be an opportunist or a chancer wanting to fill the void.

The people of Hartlepool are massively disgruntled with their Labour MP, and there is every chance at the next election he'll get the chop. Whether there'll be gravy with that chop remains to be seen. But the Drummond debacle should have taught those who want to see the back of Wright (myself included) a vital lesson: Be careful what you wish for.

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