Politics' strangest characters - Neil Hamilton|Neil Hamilton

The trouble with political jokes is that too many of them get elected. Colourful eccentrics, like John Wilkes, established our basic liberties. Curbing the arbitrary power claimed by George III, he combined politics, obscenity and debauchery in the Hellfire Club. Outlawed and expelled from the Commons three times, when told he would die 'either on the gallows or of the pox' he replied, 'that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.' Perhaps the most eccentric MP of all was Trebitsch Lincoln. Born into a Jewish family in Hungary in 1879, he became a fraudster, before emigrating to Britain to establish himself first as an Anglican curate, and then as a liberal MP in 1910 for ten months. He went on to flee the country to become a German revolutionary and a secret agent, before leading a Chinese cult as a Buddhist abbot. These and many other eccentrics portrayed in this hilarious book illustrate why the House of Commons is the world's leading political asylum.