Leicester Mercury political correspondent
The big bacon ballot box
The race to become elected mayor of Leicester is really getting into gear now.
The Labour party’s local government committee has given wannabes the green light to begin their campaigns, and other parties are due to do the same soon.
Candidates hoping to win their party’s nomination will first have to woo their party’s members, before going up against other candidates in the main contest on May 6.
But a book called The Lore of the Land details the unique way that Leicester’s mayor was chosen as recently as 1762:
An odd story formerly current was that the mayor of Leicester was chosen by a sow. According to an article in the St James’s Magazine in 1762, aspiring candidates would each sit with a hat full of beans in his lap and the new mayor would be the one from whose hat the sow ate first.
I’ll let you write your own snouts-in-the-trough jokes…
Hat-tip: Liberal England
