Hello, this is a bonus edition of the Webbox Podcast. I'm Matt Chauley. Every week, on my

time to show on a Monday, we are counting down all of the leaders of the opposition. We

did prime ministers on the show last year. We're doing leaders of the opposition. The

people who didn't quite make it, the wannabes, are almost reached the top, but didn't manage

to make it into number 10. So we've got another batch of four for you, Nigel Fletcher, from

the Centre of Opposition Studies. It's got to guide us through them, and we kick off

today with John Spencer, otherwise known as ViCountAlthought.

Right, this week's leader of the opposition is John Spencer, who was the heir to the Spencer

Eldon. He became later on the third Earl Spencer, but was known in the period that we're

interested in as ViCountAlthought, or ViCountAltrop, as we know, the aristocracy delight in having

titles that catch the rest of us out in pronunciation, but I'm going to call it author,

and he was leader of the opposition very briefly, really, between February and November of

1830. He's actually got an interesting character for his political journey. As an aristocrat,

he was, as well as having something which I think is always to the good, which is the

same name as the actor who played Leo in the West Wing, which puts him in a good place in

my book to start with. So he was born at Spencer House, the family home in London, and was

the eldest child of the second Earl Spencer. And his bloggers have noted that his upbringing

was rather blighted by quite a formidable mother, who frankly bullied her children, and

they suggest that harmed his self-confidence into adulthood. And certainly, he does seem

to be a fairly modest and unprepossessing man in his career. He wasn't particularly dominant

in the way that sort of some political figures were. Educated at Harrow, whilst he was there,

he was a contemporary of four future prime ministers, and that's another reason to not

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