The news that a donkey is in the running to be mayor of the Bulgarian town of Varna reminded me of a more local mayoral story that actually managed to make the national headlines – and that doesn’t happen very often in this far-flung corner of north-east England! Of course, like any wacky story it did end up making us a laughing stock for a while, but we had the last laugh when our rather unusual and infamous mayor turned out to be a great local politician, with some great education and fuel storage policies, and an even better ambassador for the town of Hartlepool. Not bad for a man who used to spend his weekends dressed in a furry monkey suit cavorting round a football field!
The town of Hartlepool is, unfortunately, most famous for an incident during the Napoleonic Wars, when a French ship was wrecked off the coast and the only survivor washed ashore was the ship’s pet – a small monkey wearing a velvet waistcoat. Having never seen a Frenchman before, and believing the propaganda that most of our neighbours across the Channel were somewhat hairy individuals who communicated in unintelligible grunts, the poor simian was promptly tried and hanged as a French spy. Since then the natives of Hartlepool have been known throughout the land the ’Monkey Hangers'and no-one has embraced this nickname more than the town’s football team.
In fact, they even went so far as to create a loveable character called ‘H’Angus, the Monkey'to be their match day mascot. H’Angus became such a local celebrity that he eventually decided to stand as a candidate in the Hartlepool mayoral elections – and somehow managed to win! The man inside the suit, Stuart Drummond, who had actually been thrown out of two away games for “incidents” involving female stewards, did such a great job that he was elected for a second term without a monkey suit in sight…
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