1) Christopher Leslie, who was elected as the new Member of Parliament in May 2010, was the youngest Member of Parliament to enter the House of Commons when he was previously the Member of Parliament for Shipley in 1997. He was known as the "Baby of the House" at the time. He lost his old seat in 2005 to Conservative Philip Davies (good for them!), and ended up being elected as Member of Parliament for Nottingham East (not good for us!)
2) Christian Party candidate Parvaiz Sardar reached an all-time electoral low in Nottingham East at the 2010 General Election by just polling 125 votes, (one vote for each year since the very first Nottingham East election in 1885!) Previously, this accolade had belonged to Red Front candidate and author and broadcaster Kenan Malik, who polled 212 votes at the 1987 General Election.
3) There was going to be an Independent candidate for Nottingham East at the 2010 General Election, (the first Independent candidate that wasn't an Independent Conservative or Independent Labour candidate to stand in Nottingham East since George Twells in 1945), but the candidate had pulled out before the deadline. Local resident Benjamin Barton, who had made the local news in relation to his deposition of a cigarette into a public drain because all litter bins were full where he was, had decided to put his name forward to be a candidate. But Barton had later changed his mind, causing many people, (including members of an online forum) to accuse him of misleading and even lying to people. Barton would have been the youngest Member of Parliament for the constituency had he had been elected, and it would have also been the first time that Nottingham East would have had seven candidates standing. George Twells still remains the constituency's only Independent to stand, and as I wasn't going to vote for Benjamin Barton, (even if he did make the ballot paper), it wouldn't have made any difference to me at all...
4) Patricia Wolfe, the UK Independence Party candidate was only the second female candidate ever to stand in Nottingham East. The first one was Lady Abrahams who was a Liberal candidate who stood in 1951. Ironically, if you listed all the candidates ever stood into alphabetical order by surname, Abrahams would be first in the list and Wolfe would be last. Would-be Labour candidate Sharon Atkin would have been the second female to stand, if it wasn't for the controversy that she had got herself into (see number 6 for more details). Wolfe was also older than outgoing Member of Parliament John Heppell by two years, and would have been the oldest Member of Parliament to be elected at the age of 63, beating Henry Cotton's record in 1906.
5) Sir Louis Gluckstein was the tallest politician of the 20th century ever to be elected to the British parliament. He was 2.02 metres tall, which is about six foot seven and a half inches! The record was only beaten in May 2005 when Shrewsbury Conservative candidate Daniel Kawczynski was elected, who was over six foot eight and a half inches tall.
6) Sharon Atkin was to become the Labour candidate for Nottingham East at the 1987 General Election, until she accused the party of racism; she was probably the first black candidate to stand in Nottingham East. Atkin was removed from standing by the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock and was replaced by local businessman Mohammad Aslam, who still lost the election, but now owns a Charted Accountant practice on Mansfield Road in Nottingham.
7) Sharon Atkin would have also been the first candidate to have the same surname as a previous contender: the Liberal candidate E E H Atkin at the 1922 General Election. However, there have actually been two candidates that have had the same surname and have successfully stood: Labour Cooperative candidate A H Jones in the 1922 By-Election and Green Party candidate Andrew Jones from 1992 - 70 years apart. (Probably not surprising as Jones is a common surname). I believe that none of the candidates mentioned here were related to each other, and I will probably never be too sure whether or not the "A" in A H Jones also stood for Andrew as well! Oh, and speaking of namesakes, I am not counting Sidney Shephard and Richard Shepherd as having the same surname because of the spelling variations in their names. However they were respectively, the final Conservative candidate before Nottingham East was briefly abolished in 1955 and the first Conservative candidate when the constituency was revived in February 1974.
8) Jim Thornton's defeat in the 2005 General Election had pushed the Conservatives to third place; the first time they had been in such a position (excluding the Independent Conservative candidate in 1983), since these records began in 1885. He was also the first official Conservative candidate since Sir John Rees in 1912 to get less than 7,000 votes.
9) Issan Ghazni, the Liberal Democrat candidate beat Jim Thornton by just 22 votes, and by doing so, managed to take second place - the first time that this has happened to a Liberal candidate since Norman Birkett stood in 1931. The 1931 General Election was also the last time that a General Election did not take place on a Thursday. John Heppell's 2005 count was the lowest for a Labour candidate since James Harrison stood in 1945 (the first time that Nottingham East had a Labour Member of Parliament), so that so called "low turnout" that they blamed on us had backfired on them instead. The positioning of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates in 2005 had been repeated in the 2010 result, although both parties had more votes.
10) Richard Shepherd, the February 1974 Conservative candidate has been the Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills in the West Midlands since 1979. Despite such a long stint in parliament, he has never held a front bench position. Martin Brandon Bravo, the 1979 Conservative candidate, went on to win Nottingham South in 1983 and 1987 and more recently he became vice president of the Amateur Rowing Association.
11) Bernard Brook Partridge, the Conservative candidate in 1970, was a future chairman of the Greater London Council. He famously made comments about the Sex Pistols that were actually released on track four of their Pirates of Destiny album!
12) Sam Swerling, the October 1974 Conservative candidate was to be the chairman of The Monday Club between 1980 and 1982. The club was formed in 1961 as the Conservative Party's right-wing pressure group. Swerling was involved in the British National Party many years later, so therefore M Coles who stood in 1979 might have had some competition for being the most far-right candidate to stand here.
13) The total number of votes cast in the constituency for all the election candidates from 1885 to 2010 stands at 972,918, which makes an average of just over 27,797 votes in each election. This figure will presumably pass the 1,000,000 mark sometime in the mid 2010s if there is to be an election held then - two elections after the 2005 General Election. Despite the constituency being recently Labour dominated, more people have voted Conservative since 1885. One assumes that if the next parliament lasts four years, then that election could be sometime in 2014, if estimation and prediction has anything to go by. Of course the figure doesn't count the hundreds (or thousands) of supposedly spoiled ballot papers!
14) John Heppell holds the record for the most number of votes in the constituency - 25,026 at his first election in 1992. He also holds the record for the biggest majority of 15,419 in the 1997 General Election. Heppell was also born on the same day as the 1960s pop singer Lulu. (You know that really makes me want to shout!)
15) Nottingham East has been one of very few constituencies to have had a Member of Parliament who has a namesake of a current-day musician, who happens to be James Morrison! The musician Morrison wasn't born until half a century after the politician Morrison died.
16) Although Louis Gluckstein and Lady Abrahams had never stood against each other in the Nottingham East elections, the two people had stood against each other in 1964 for the Greater London Council election results in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency. Gluckstein got the most votes, while Abrahams was second to last with her number of votes.
17) Norman Birkett was an alternate judge in the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. He was also a trained barrister.
18) Arnold Morley became Postmaster General in 1892 and remained in the post until he lost his seat in 1895. He was to have a by-election in Nottingham East as a result, but Morley kept his seat as he was unopposed. The post was abolished in 1969.
19) Sir Louis Gluckstein was defeated for the final time on his birthday in 1950, and many years later he passed away on 27th October 1979, which was the 48th anniversary of Gluckstein winning the Nottingham East seat for the first time.
20) The first ten Members of Parliament were all alive at the start of the 20th century. John Cordeaux was the first person to have been born after 1900. It is probably the only time since 1885 that the most people have been alive at the same time, even though James Harrison was in nappies at just four months old, while Sir Louis Gluckstein was a toddler!
21) Jack Dunnett became the constituency's oldest living former Member of Parliament in 2005 after beating Sir Louis Gluckstein's age of 83 years 8 months.
22) Michael Knowles was a municipal expert on the Solace team in Iraq during the 2003 war to capture Saddam Hussein.
23) If 2001 Conservative candidate Richard Allan had been elected, there would have been two Members of Parliament with that name in the House of Commons. His namesake (who had exactly the same spelling) was a sitting Liberal Democrat candidate for Sheffield Hallam who was re-elected, but stood down at the 2005 General Election and was replaced in that constituency by (Coalition) Deputy Prime Minister, Liberal Democrat leader (and former East Midlands MEP) Nick Clegg. Allan's middle name was Friend, which was all the more reason for voting for him!
24) Sidney Shephard came second in his election in 1951 despite polling over 20,000 votes. Ian Winterbottom also lost with over 21,000 votes in 1959; the same election when John Cordeaux won the biggest number of votes for a Conservative candidate in the constituency. The main reason that Winterbottom's count was so high was because only two candidates were standing and therefore there were no Liberal candidates. However he had been a sitting Member of Parliament for Nottingham Central prior to 1955, when Nottingham East was still in existence.
25) Walter Windsor, who had been the final Labour candidate to finish in third place back in 1931 (those were the days), had previously been a Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green North East from 1923 to 1929 and for Kingston-Upon-Hull Central from 1935 to 1945. Nottingham East was the only constituency that he stood in where he didn't win! Windsor had also found that his bad luck increased even further as the sitting Member of Parliament in Kingston-Upon-Hull Central in 1945, when he had died six days before the General Election and caused the election to be delayed for approximately a month. Walter Windsor was one of just six candidates who had passed away in the 20th century prior to the election that they were standing in.
26) James Harrison and Yours Truly both share the same birthday of August 30th.
27) On an edition of the BBC 2 programme "What the Papers Say", one of the newspapers that were reviewed referred to John Heppell as John "Knuckles" Heppell. The nickname came about when Heppell had tattoos on his knuckles when he was younger. The tattoos were still there, albeit slightly faded many years later when he became a Member of Parliament, and so the aforementioned nickname became apparent because of this.
28) Jack Dunnett was born between the date of John Rees' death and the Nottingham East By-Election in 1922. In fact he was just five days old when John Houfton won the 1922 By-Election.
29) Arthur Comyns-Carr, the 1935 Liberal candidate who was defeated heavily against Sir Louis Gluckstein, had stood against the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his then Epping constituency four years before. (Ironically, I have always thought of Sir Louis Gluckstein as being the Winston Churchill of Nottingham East!)
30) Martyn Sloman, who was the Labour candidate in 1983, has written a number of books on training, such as A Handbook on Training Strategy and The Changing World of the Trainer. He also writes a monthly column in TJ (Training Journal).
