The great game

Every four years in America a competition is held to see which of the candidates has the best British ancestry (this includes Irish since almost by definition the lucky forefathers predate the Republic).

One of the most surprising was Barack Obama, whom many people didn't even think was American, but who duly produced a family in Cambridgeshire which, confusingly, went on to found the then colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

I think the last not to have participated in this humiliating ritual was Eisenhower, who was of German ancestry, although there might have been a tiny enclave of militaristic Eisenhowers in North Wales.

Of course Willard 'Mitt' Romney has unearthed several families in the North of England who are fourth cousins. Inexplicably he did not visit them when he came to England. Several are unemployed and its always nice to unearth a relative with a couple of hundred million dollars.

Despite holding a lead in the polls, Romney is fast disappearing from the blog radar, due to having said he would arm the Syrian rebels, proof that, as I suspected, he is quite, quite mad.

America, America, where are your Swedes, your Red Indians, your Hispanics, your Poles, your Italians? Why despite the country being stuffed with people of Italian ancestry, does none of them ever become President? I am beginning to think it might do the Land of the Free a little buono.

PS Less than four weeks to go and the campaign is still like watching paint dry. Are we going to get to 6th November and they'll say 'Damn! We thought it was next year!'?