more thoughts on the poll

Someone on the blog has grumbled that the voting was very conservative which it was. I didn’t vote, but had I done so, I would have voted for Paul, Ross, Graham and Stephen Fry. Now in 2006 on the blog and again in 2009 I ranked my all-time favourite players and on both occasions, of those still alive, those four were my favourites.

I would very much like to have included Julian and Jenny in particular – Julian just gets better every time he plays and Jenny’s unique style always makes me laugh hard. But I couldn’t find one of my top four to drop out.

So I’d be ecstatic if I turned up for a recording and found Paul Merton, Ross Noble, Stephen Fry and Graham Norton on the stage.

But I’d be almost as ecstatic to see Gyles Brandreth, Marcus Brigstocke, Jenny Eclair and Julian Clary up there with Nicholas.

And I’d be more than delighted to walk in to Tony Hawks, Sheila Hancock, Sue Perkins and Kit Hesketh-Harvey.

It would be a great evening in the company of Tim Rice, Pam Ayres, Josie Lawrence and Chris Neill too.

And I’m sure I’d get some laughs from Charles Collingwood, Liza Tarbuck, Shappi Khorsandi and Fred MacAulay. But I would probably be a little disappointed at first!

That’s the thing – the standards really are very high.

Perhaps a better way to have done the poll would be in a Big Brother/American Idol style and let everyone pick as many as they liked and have the bottom ranked fall off each time until we got a winner. It might get a bit tedious to be voting continuously though.

Or we could take away four players – or add another 12 – and put them in a series of one-on-one showdown polls till we ended up with a winner.

Anyway I’m glad you seem to have found it a bit of fun.