President Seymour

These US elections have caused me to remember a story my Great Uncle Percival Seymour KBE, MBE, BBC, IBM, AT&T, told me just before he died. Very few Americans know this, and even fewer will believe it now, but my Great Uncle Percy served as the president of the United States between August 1958 and July 1959.

During this period, President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed himself to be a canary. His personal doctor recommended only that they put a small mirror in his cage so he'd feel as if he had the company of another canary. Other than that, he felt the madness would pass.

Under normal circumstances, the vice-president would assume the duties of the president. At this time, the vice-president was Richard Nixon. You would have thought that a man with such naked ambition as Nixon would have leapt at the chance, but back then he was far too occupied with working on an alternative recipe to the popular drink, Dr Pepper, with which, he told anyone who'd listen, he'd make himself the richest man in the world.

Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, heard about this through an intelligence operative working secretly at the White House whose job it was to make sure the president always had enough birdseed in his cage. He picked up his red phone and, after some temporary embarrassment, the full extent of the problem was indicated in full. Macmillan simply smiled and told Washington to leave it to him. He hung up the phone and picked up another to his secretary.

"Get me Percy."

It was a Thursday afternoon, so Great Uncle Percy was in the smoking room of his club when the call from Downing Street came through. Fifteen minutes later he was in the prime minister's office, lighting a pipe with the PM, an old school chum, being apprised of the situation and given details of his most unusual mission: he was to act as a stand-in.

You see, my Great Uncle Percy looked exactly like Dwight D. Eisenhower. Many people had remarked on the fact; and a number of his closest friends had won a great deal of money by betting that the thirty-fourth president of the United States was about to, for instance, turn up at Lord's cricket ground for an afternoon of cricket. Such was the likeness, no one ever quibbled but just paid up.

Only a very few people knew of the plan. In the U.K. only the prime minister and her majesty the queen knew. In the US, Hoover, and one or two others were fully aware, but no one else.

That period of American history was relatively quiet, though a number of trade deals that favoured UK companies were pushed through and, although you'd never have known it, cricket was declared the national sport. In fact, if you look it up, you'll find that it still is.

About a year after Great Uncle Percy's mission began, President Eisenhower declared that while he was still a canary, he was a canary who, through mental illness, believed himself to be the leader of the free world, and he was allowed to resume his duties, albeit with a light workload.

Before he died, I asked my Great Uncle Percy if Eisenhower's wife, Mannie, knew that he had been impersonating her husband. His monocle shone as he told me: "I am sure she suspected something, my boy, but she preferred to remain in ignorant bliss." Adding, "Damn fine woman."