GORDON Brown must announce by Tuesday if he intends to join George Canning in the record books. Mr Brown would then be in truly colourful company, because Canning was the British Prime Minister who had an affair with the Queen and was injured in a duel with the Secretary of State for War.

But Canning, who like Mr Brown spent most of his life wanting and waiting to become PM, only lasted 119 days in the top job, making him the shortest served British PM. If Mr Brown calls a General Election for October 25 - which he must do by Tuesday - he will have been PM for just one day longer than Canning.

Canning was born in 1770. His father was a failed wine merchant who abandoned him and then died on his first birthday. The fatherless boy was brought up in penury by a mother who, disgracefully, was an actress, although his rich uncle paid for him to go to Eton and then Oxford.

Canning became an MP for a rotten borough and, as Foreign Secretary, captured the Danish fleet from under Napoleon's nose. He then promised to send British troops to assist the Duke of Wellington in Portugal, only to find that the War Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, had sent them to Holland. Canning demanded that the PM, the Duke of Portland, should sack Castlereagh. Portland agreed, but didn't tell Castlereagh. When Castlereagh found out, he was understandably furious and challenged Canning to a duel.

Despite never having fired a pistol in his life, Canning turned up on Putney Heath on September 21, 1809. Both men missed with their first shots, but in the second round the War Secretary hit the Foreign Secretary in the thigh.

Both Cabinet members resigned, followed by Portland. Canning brazenly suggested to George III that he should become PM, but the King instead appointed Spencer Perceval - a good thing as on May 11, 1812, Perceval became the only British PM (so far) to be assassinated when John Bellingham, a lunatic, shot him through the heart.

Canning and Castlereagh were soon back in government, only Canning resigned in 1820 over the treatment of Queen Caroline. She was estranged from the new king, George IV who described her as "the vilest wretch this world was ever cursed with". He had her forcibly ejected from her own Coronation at Westminster Abbey.

Canning supported the Queen because he was one of her many lovers - a fact that George IV held against Canning until Foreign Secretary Castlereagh slit his own throat with a letter-opener in 1822 and Canning stepped into the vacancy.

By 1827, George IV and Canning were reconciled and on April 10 he made him Prime Minister. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks earlier Canning had attended the Duke of York's funeral where he picked up a heavy cold from which he never recovered. He told the King he was seriously unwell on July 29 and he died on August 8 after 119 days.

Maybe today's politicians aren't so bad, after all.

MANY, many thanks to the 300-plus people who attended the Of Fish And Actors experience at Darlington Civic Theatre on Tuesday. From where I was standing, it seemed to go astonishingly well. For that I must thank actor Paul Harman, from CTC Theatre based at the Arts Centre in Darlington, Lynda Winstanley and the crew at the Civic Theatre, and my prima ballerina Hannah Barron, who danced Anna Pavlova's dying swan quite beautifully. Thanks to Rachael Tiffany at the Tiffany School of Dance in Darlington for teaching her so superbly.