Those who were there at the time know that one of the biggest shocks, not including electric ones, in Middlesbrough’s illustrious political history was when residents woke on the morning of the 5th May this year to find that Andy Preston was no longer their officially elected mayor.
But how did he lose, we all asked? Well, one of the obvious reasons was he received fewer votes than the Labour candidate, Chris Cooke, and in a democracy this generally means you lose, except, of course, in the USA where candidates actually still think they’ve won and declare it’s all a ‘fix’ and demand a recount. Other than this though, people have been scratching their heads about Andy’s historic election defeat, and many so badly that they have caused serious damage to their hair follicles, even though some are already bald.
The man had a Twitter(X) account on which he posted lovely pictures of Middlesbrough and the surrounding areas and often made videos telling us how brilliant everything is and, that if you close your eyes and put your hands over your ears, there are absolutely no problems in the town, and we should all smile and be happy like you’ve got millions of pounds in the bank. Someone who does this doesn’t lose an election but he bloody well did.
After the disbelief had subsided though and shock levels had fallen from a very high 12.9 to a relatively low 4.6, those people who were still capable of rational thought began to ask a completely different question. What will he do next? People didn’t know and even though many of them had quite long and detailed conversations with other people about his future plans, they still didn’t know. In fact, they were completely clueless, mainly because he hadn’t said anything about it and not given any clues. Rumours that he might become a firefighter were quickly extinguished when pictures emerged of him refusing to climb a ladder and failing to control a very heavy water hose.
Anyway, it seems that the mystery of his future plans has now been solved with the emergence of a much better, completely unfounded and unsubstantiated rumour that he intends to become a professional darts player. But why darts? Well, it is highly likely that at some point in his life he has played the game in a pub or on holiday in Torremelinos, and some people are speculating that he has an actual dartboard in his Northallerton mansion where he practises for 12 hours a day. He is also said to have a good arm which apparently is important in darts although we have no way of verifying this, either the good arm or whether it’s important in darts. Other evidence is that darts legend and former world champion Glen Durrant is from Middlesbrough and that’s exactly where Andy was mayor for 4 years.
Obviously, we’ll just have to wait and see but if, indeed, he does make the darts move, then let’s all get behind him and, you never know, we could have the next Middlesbrough darts world champion from Northallerton.
Fantastic News of Middlesbrough 