Who's the Greatest Free Thinker? Last chance to vote ...

The Free Thinking vote for the Greatest Free Thinker in the history of the North East is open till midnight this Friday (October 16).

I long ago decided that admitting ignorance is almost always the best policy - you learn more and you don't commit to things you don't understand. So the other day when the Night Waves team working on Free Thinking showed me the line-up of candidates I had to admit that I hadn't even heard of some of them.

Don't worry, I'm not talking about the Venerable Bede and Stephenson (though wait, that's not quite so easy, as you need to choose between Robert and George) but the list also includes the industrialist Ambrose Crowley, writer Githa Sowerby and the MP Ellen Wilkinson...Ellen Wilkinson? 'Oh she's really well known', my colleague exclaims, 'Haven't you seen her in the photos of the Jarrow march'. And suddenly I can see her, or I think I can. My partner's grandfather joined the Jarrow march and its mythology still runs in the family, but to be sure I go back to browse the Free Thinking website and then off through the links to many other pages of history and politics to find out more. I didn't know about Ambrose Crowley either, a pioneer of better rights for workers in the 1700s. He came orginally from Worcestershire but set up factories in Tyneside that supplied nails, hinges, pots and cannons to the Navy and the East India Company. Reading and talking about him I begin to feel as if I've known about him for years.

But isn't that one of the qualities of knowledge - once you have it it's hard to imagine not having it - which may be why programme contributors sometimes forget that listeners don't always share their own knowledge things - but that's another subject. Anyway, Ambrose feels like he's becoming an old friend although I imagine The Venerable Bede stands a better chance of winning the vote - but who knows? For me that's the fun in a vote like this - the journeys of discovery and the discussion - after all there are no fixed criteria by which to make your judgement.



But if it's fun taking part it's rather more hair-raising for the production team. Once the vote is decided (it'll be announced on Monday's Night Waves) they have to commission a talk about the winner to be delivered over the Free Thinking weekend, and they're far too busy to line up twelve potential essayists in advance of the result. This may not be a vote on the scale of Strictly Come Dancing but it is nail-biting ...