When Lord Avebury was Eric Buttock

At Harborough Antiques Fair on Sunday I bought a copy of Private Eye on London. Published in 1962 and written by Christopher Booker, Willie Rushton and Richard Ingrams (with photographs by Maurice Hatton), it was the magazine's first book.

It features Willie Rushton's cartoons prominently and tells the story of a man called Gnittie who visits the capital.

He visits Westminster and comes across "a little man in shorts and a schoolboy cap":

my name's eric BUttock and i'm a liberal MP. Evry few yeres evrybody get fed up with the other two parties and hav a Liberal REVIVAL. Then Jo - he's Hed of our party - sa yaroo now we are going to replace both the other parties, we got orl the right polerices for Britern etc. and then along come the Genral Elekshun and we get about o votes. It's jolly well unfair.

Eric Buttock, of course, was inspired by Eric Lubbock, the Liberal victor in the famous Orpington by-election. Today he is better known as Lord Avebury or Eric Avebury.