If elected, Esther Rantzen would not be Luton's first noteworthy MP. Top of the list is Charles Hill, well known to senior readers as the wartime "radio doctor". Hill was MP for the town from 1950 until 1963. His broadcasts advised listeners to eat more prunes ("the little black-coated workers") while cautioning them "not to whip your bowels into a frenzy".
Luton East was won for Labour in 1974 by Ivor Clemitson, who had renounced holy orders as an Anglican priest to fight the seat.
John Prescott had also been an MP for Luton. Sir John Prescott Hewett, that is - the first-ever Tory MP for Luton, elected for a single year in 1922. Sir John had been lieutenant governor of India's United Provinces and was the author of the imperial volume Jungle Trails in Northern India: Reminiscences of Hunting in India, still in print in the country of its inspiration.
