Name: The £50 note.
Age: First introduced in 1725.
Appearance: Soon to change.
I hate change. What’s happening? After 2020, the cotton £50 banknote will be issued in plastic, like the £5 and £10 notes.
Makes sense, I guess. It will also feature the likeness of a new, yet-to-be-chosen British personage.
What kind of personage might qualify? First, you have to be dead.
That’s me out. And you must have made a lasting contribution to science.
Who is in the running? Margaret Thatcher.
That’s confusing, because there was also a prime minister called Margaret Thatcher, who stole milk from children. It’s the same person.
But she wasn’t a scientist! She had a degree in chemistry from Oxford.
And what, pray tell, was her lasting contribution to science? She invented the Mr Whippy.
She did not. You’re right, she didn’t. But she did work as a research chemist at J Lyons, which produced the Mr Whippy rival, Mister Softee.
And she invented that? She may have been part of a team that tested the quality of certain emulsified ice-creams.
May have? Actually, there is no real evidence to support what the New Yorker once called the “frozen dessert origin myth”. Soft-scoop ice-cream was invented in the US years before Lyons hired Thatcher.
This is an outrage. What about Turing? What about Hawking? Relax. Thatcher was nominated for the banknote slot before the science restriction was announced, and she made the shortlist of 800 only because she was technically eligible. The comedian Will Hay also qualified because he was an amateur astronomer.
Are there any actual scientists on it? Alexander Fleming, Rosalind Franklin and Alan Turing are there too. Stephen Hawking is the bookmakers’ favourite.
Phew. And the final decision will be considered by the Bank of England’s banknote character advisory committee.
This is all very strange. The last I heard, they were getting rid of the £50 note. That was the thinking not so long ago. One banking executive described the notes as “the currency of corrupt elites, of crime of all sorts and of tax evasion”.
Say what you like about those corrupt elites, they were very fond of Thatcher. Yes, they would have been pleased.
Do say: “Your sink’s fixed – bung me a couple of Thatchers and we’ll say no more about the VAT.”
Don’t say: “Never mind – by 2020, we’ll all be too poor to care who’s on the £50 note.”
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