Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heel and today we're talking about the upcoming

Orton-Denton bi-election and we decided to look back over previous by-election contests with two

experts in this field. They are Ian Dale, who's got a new book out on British by-elections from 1769 to 2024, and the legendary John Craig, who's the chief political correspondent of Sky News. And now, John, first of all, I mean, you're going to be going to Gorton Denton on Thursday. How many contests does that make it for you for Sky? Well, first of all, when doesn't Ian have a new book out? Secondly, I knew you'd asked me this.

The mid-beds one was number 40, so this is going to be 45.

If you count the Carefilly, Welshshire by-election, 46.

And John, why do you enjoy by-election so much?

They're fun.

It's live telly.

It's largely unscripted. And they're

unpredictable. I mean, none more so than the last parliamentary by-election, the first one of this

parliament, Runcorn and Helsby. My goodness. Sarah Poachin won by just six votes. I mean,

that was an absolute nail-bite. So the result was about 6 a.m. And they're exciting. I mean, I was an absolute nail-byter. The result was about 6am. And they're exciting.

I mean, I've been to lots of counts where you get there at 10 o'clock, then the polls close,

and one party thinks they've won. And about halfway through the evening, it becomes clear

that they've been rather complacent, and another party wins. I mean, a classic example of that was Bradford West and George Galloway beat,

it was now Nash Shah, wasn't it, who's now MP for another Bradford seat.

And I remember, I hope you won't mind, but I remember going for a meal with a splendid

Asian meal with Jerry Sutcliffe, who was the MP for Bradford South, in a

fabulous Asian restaurant in Bradford.

And somebody said to Jerry, your phone's not ringing, Jerry.

And he said, oh, no news is good news.

And when we got there, Labour really did think that we're going to win.

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