Churchill- LLC special Tue 10th July.

Progress on the Churchill special continues. We hope we'll be informative as well as funny and people should leave knowing a great deal more than they did about the great man. But there is one dark secret we've uncovered which we'd better just face up to.

Churchill was ginger. Yup, a copper top. A strawberry blonde. In short a ginga. But because all the photos were black and white, the British public was spared this dreadful knowledge. And it was probably for the best. Hitler managed to convince a nation that he (a short arsed, dark-haired weirdo) was the rightful leader of a race of arian supermen. But a Ginger Prime minister? That's just taking the piss.

In an address to his old school, he told the boys there... "Never, give in! Never give in! Never! Never! Never! Never! Never! Never!" Inspiring stuff, but the boys were so determined never to give in that in the following term 15 of them died from Chinese burns.

It was hardly surprising that he was stirring up defiance among the boys in this way, he had hated the school, were he was frequently beaten; according to one biography, 'until his bottom was a mass of blood.' He was once punished because in latin class he didn't understand the Vocative form of the word for 'table' - His teacher said 'It means O table! You would use it in addressing a table!' But I never do sir! replied Churchill. It's no wonder he wasn't scared of Hitler. If you grew up being beaten to a pulp for not knowing how to talk to tables, then a genocidal maniac is pretty much par for the course.

The most famous photo of churchill, with his scowling bulldog look, was produced when the photographer snatched his cigar out of his mouth just before taking the photo. Which is rather like finding out that the look of steely defiance on Che Guevarra's face is becuase the photographer's just called him a poof.

Rather touchingly, on his 90th Birthday, a young girl from Mexico sent him a birthday card by simply writing- 'To the greatest man in the world' on the envelope. Who would that reach today?