Age: 52.
Appearance: Chap.
Name: Edmund Christopher Pery, seventh Earl of Limerick, seventh Viscount Limerick of the City of Limerick, seventh Baron Foxford of Stackpole Court and eighth Baron Glentworth of Mallow.
How many people are we talking about here? Just one. He is several aristocrats, however. Their family trees can get confusing.
Is he like one of those lords who is also his own dad? Um, kind of. Or to be precise, no.
It’s outrageous that people like him still have the power to shape laws in modern Britain! He doesn’t. That’s the 92 hereditary peers who have been elected to membership of the House of Lords. He has put his name down to join them, though.
Eh? How does that work? It was all set down in the 1999 House of Lords Act. Any hereditary peer who wants a place in the House of Lords has to wait for one of the 92 to step down or die, then hope to be elected by the others.
Can I apply to be elected? Nope. Aristocrats only.
Seriously? Seriously. They write a short personal statement saying why they want more power, then hope for the best. Fourteen have applied for the seat that’s available this month, following the death of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. The Earl of Limerick has made himself the star of the show by submitting a comic poem as his statement.
He’s done what? He’s written a comic poem, basically sending the whole thing up, and ending on a joke about bottoms.
The Earl of Limerick has written a comic poem, eh? Tell me, what verse form does it take? Iambic tetrameter couplets. The spiritual home of cheesy verse.
Oh. I was kind of hoping that … It’s not a limerick, OK! But it is quite good. Indeed it’s basically a satire on people like himself and all the bankers and lawyers on the list who “wait with covert eagerness/For ninety-two to be one less”.
Classy. That’s what you get from Eton and Oxford, among other things.
Speaking of which, what’s the bum joke? “And from your seats so well entrenched,/Please vote that mine may be embenched.”
I’m warming to his lordship already. What’s his day job? He’s a banker and a lawyer.
Do say: “Perhaps your lordship does not evince all the seriousness expected of a legislator?”
Don’t say: “You probably should have gone full pentameter!”
