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AmeriCast, listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, here's another episode of Bio-election cast on a Wednesday just to keep you on your toes. And also, he's not been on an episode of By-Election cast, although he's on every episode of newscast, so you wouldn't really have noticed. It's Chris. Hello, Chris. Hello. Do you like my completely arbitrary distinctions about what episodes are called? I do, I do. It continues a long-standing newscast, Brexit cast, election cast tradition. Yeah, we'll just change the names and the hope people notice. Now, you've been to Make-A-Field a few times now. Can you bring me any, as we would call in the trade? It's a terrible phrase, local colour. I'm mainly I'm asking this because I'm jealous that I'm not getting to go and I used to love pounding the pavements for by-elections all around the country. So I miss just getting a feel for different places and meeting different people. Totally. And it's what I love about about by-elections in general and being out on the road in particular journalistically is the great it is the greatest privilege of the job really and

so that literally the local color is posters on sticks of wood sticking out of

people's gardens or driveways or window boxes or whatever and you see loads for Labor you see loads for

reform you see a few for Restore Britain this outfit that Rupert Lowe the former reform MP

leads I even saw Adam when I was there this week. Someone had a flagpole in their garden that

looked like quite a permanent fixture. I don't think it had been put up purely for this

exercise and democracy. That a flagpole with a flag of, I forget whether it was Labour or Reform.

Actually, I think it was reform, flying from it.

So what you get, and you don't always get this in elections,

I didn't see much evidence of it, for instance, in the local and devolved elections last month,

albeit the snapshot of the places I went to, the by-election,

confronts you just like that.

So if you were a visitor from the other side of the world

and you happen to drive through the Makerfield constituency,

you'd think, there's an election going on here.

It's very, very visible.

And those trademark election posters are made of a particular material.

And I won't say the brand name because we're on the BBC, but it is a lightweight, durable, corrugated plastic made with fluted twin wall polypropylene. Is it really? And you just think it's a bit of card. No, it is not. There's a whole industry behind those posters. And there's a whole lot going on in the Makerfield By-election, which we will uncover in this episode of By-electioncast.

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