please empty your brain below
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11. I don't remember too much of Mcmillan but I believe it was him who gave us the saying 'You've never had it so good'
RogerW | 14.07.16 - 6:04 a.m. | #
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I reckon that the PM's job is pretty hectic (understatement) - as close to 24/7 as you can practically get. Five years is a long time with that
pressure.
100andthirty | 14.07.16 - 6:32 a.m. | #
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I was around for Clement Attlee but do not remember him, I do remember Winston Churchill from 1951, and all the others since then.
John | 14.07.16 - 6:56 a.m. | #
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For 8 Prime Ministers you show Wilson then Callaghan but for 9 you have Wilson then Heath then Callaghan. Have you got 8 wrong? Should it be Heath then Callaghan?
Barry | 14.07.16 - 7:16 a.m. | #
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Ok, I'll own up to 14. But I'm not sure if any of them got it right. 🤔
Jo W | 14.07.16 - 7:54 a.m. | #
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Same as DG - 9. All I can remember about Wilson was his unexpected stepping down being announced on the news. Prior to that I can remember the three day week and strikes but was too young to make the link to whoever was the Prime Minister far away in that London place.
PC | 14.07.16 - 8:00 a.m. | #
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Barry - no, because there were two Wilson governments (1964-70 and 1974-76), either side of Heath's (1970-74)
Sarah | Homepage | 14.07.16 - 8:16 a.m. | #
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Looking back on what I remember about past PM's for Wilson it was his pipe and holidays on the Scilly Isle.
Churchill his top hat, cigar and drinking.
Eden the Suez canal. Also his poor health.
Heath for his sailing and piano playing.
Thatcher I think of grocers shops, her nearly getting blown up in Brighton. I also remember her mistakes in some speeches at party conferences before she was PM. The humour aimed at her husband.
Major for his visits to cricket grounds.
Blair not much, nor his wife.
Cameron, maybe in time, for beginning the end of the UK.
I once saw Boris and David walking along together near the Mall, I shouted "Hello Boris" to which he waved, David did not look all that pleased. David was PM at the time and Boris Mayor. If I saw Boris again now I would probably Boo.
John | 14.07.16 - 8:34 a.m. | #
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The Wilson-Heath business also affects others in the list.
The algortithm for building the list seems to be, as you are working backwards through time, at each change of PM, if the PM you are adding to the list (the retiring one) is already in the list (because they had another go later on), then you remove them from that later position. So each PM gets mentioned in order of their first session within the described lifetime.
A bit subtle.
Malcolm | 14.07.16 - 9:14 a.m. | #
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I should have said that if my procedure produces the same list as before but in a different order, you only put one of the lists into the OUT tray.
I shall stop telling DG how to suck eggs. He's obviously rather good at it!
Malcolm | 14.07.16 - 9:27 a.m. | #
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10 for me.
Macmillan actually said "most of our people have never had it so good"
Just as Callaghan never said "Crisis? What crisis?" (that was a Supertramp album!). He said "I don't think other people in the world would share the view [that] there is mounting chaos"
Much less headline-worthy!
But Wilson did talk about "the pound in your pocket" and say (in respect of Labour Party coup talk - nothing changes!) "I know what's going on! I'm going on!"
David | 14.07.16 - 9:47 a.m. | #
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11 apparently, but I was born in the last year of MacMillan's reign, and cant say I remember him or Douglas-Home at all.
I remember from Wilson onwards - mainly thanks to the comedians of the day satarising him and Heath. I seem to remember one of them saying "Who's a silly billy" a lot!
My kids have lived through 4-5, but I'm not sure any of them could name one, other than Cameron!
Cornish Cockney | 14.07.16 - 11:00 a.m. | #
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Apparently the Supertramp title (Crisis? What crisis?) was a line in the Day of the Jackal in 1973, but the same phrase was used by Irish politician Sean Flanagan in 1970. http://www.quote-unquote.org.uk/p0000029.htm
Thanks for this, DG. I hadn't really thought before that I lived during the premiership of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson. I don't remember either while they were in power, but I do recall Callaghan and 1979. Also references to Thatcher, milk snatcher, years after it happened.
Lucky Boris - new job. He seems to have the Duke of Edinburgh approach to diplomacy, and the Alan Clark approach to actualité.
Andrew | 14.07.16 - 11:11 a.m. | #
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Too many.
GA Annie | 14.07.16 - 11:21 a.m. | #
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apparently I'm a 14, never thought about it before but I'm surprised it's so many because I don't remember too much about them ... like others I remember the quirky (inconsequential?) things not their policies or what happened during their premiership ... Wilson (pipe, waterproof coats), Douglas-Home (chinless wonder), Heath (boats and music), Eden (his family owned land locally and 2 of his aunts lived in the building which was a hotel at the bottom of the hill), etc etc
they're always so concerned about their legacy, doubt if this is what they'd have in mind
Caz | 14.07.16 - 11:48 a.m. | #
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6 for me, half of them officially prime minister of the country I "was" in as well.
Patrickov | 14.07.16 - 1:28 p.m. | #
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Interesting, actually, that Wilson was the last person to serve twice (discontinuously). I think in the olden days it was more common - in the 19th Century Gladstone used to alternate with Disraeli and then with Salisbury, and in the 20th Baldwin, Macdonald and Churchill all served more than once. There seems now to be a sense that a Prime Minister who loses an election should give up the leadership, which makes this less likely to happen.
Andrew M | 14.07.16 - 3:33 p.m. | #
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Going with eleven, although I do not remember anyone prior to "Our`Arold.
IanB | 14.07.16 - 4:39 p.m. | #
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4 for me!
(if you didn't actually read it, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May)
Tube Geek | 14.07.16 - 6:12 p.m. | #
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@cornish Cockney
"Silly Billy" was supposed to have been Denis Healey, as impersonated by Mike Garwood.
I was born in the Supermac era, but recall nothing of his time in office. All I remember of his successor was hearing his name on the news and thinking it sounded funny. So to me the archetypal PM is Wilson, whose two premierships, along with Heath's, almost exactly coincided with my time in formal education.
The three day week was the 1973 miner's strike, during Heath's government.
Timbo | 14.07.16 - 6:15 p.m. | #
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I recall the demises of all PMs from Churchill to Thatcher being reported in the News. As PMs are generally getting younger, (present company excepted- Mrs May is the oldest person to become PM since Callaghan) and life expectancy longer, the number of living former PMs is increasing- there are currently four - so prime ministers are being appointed faster than they are dying off.
Timbo | 14.07.16 - 6:31 p.m. | #
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Six for me; and as I'm a civil servant, this is now my fourth "boss"
Friar Sven | 14.07.16 - 8:50 p.m. | #
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@Timbo - Mike Yarwood
Nick | 15.07.16 - 12:30 p.m. | #
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@nick
I know - the curse of predictive text
timbo | 15.07.16 - 1:14 p.m. | #
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Doh! Thanks Timbo!
Cornish Cockney | 16.07.16 - 11:14 a.m. | #
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