Last year, I fell in love with Jeremy Corbyn: his policies, his passion, even his penchant for dressing in a rather dishevelled manner. So, I decided, what better way to express this love than through the medium of song? It's true that my imaginatively-titled 'Love Song for Jeremy Corbyn' wasn't to everyone's taste, featuring lines such as 'Get on your bike and please ride me home/You're all that I like, my sweet garden gnome'. Still, I performed it in comedy clubs up and down the country, with audiences reacting in either amusement, indifference or horror.
At the time, my anthem felt faintly, well, revolutionary. It even featured in the Evening Standard, The Scotsman and The Spectator. But when it came to recording the music video for the song, a cursory search revealed that I wasn't the only songwriter with a crush on Corbyn. No, there were at least 30 heartfelt original odes to JC on YouTube, with titles such as 'Jeremy Corbyn (We All Adore Him)' and 'Stop the Red Flag Turning Blue' (despite actually being Prime Minister, Theresa May doesn't seem to have inspired quite the same level of musical devotion.)
To get the Labour leader himself to pay attention, I faced serious competition. The trouble with being a comedy songwriter is that, however much you like and admire the target of your song, it's also essential to satirise them. And, as a video of me mooning lovestruck over pictures of Jeremy wouldn't be much fun for anyone but me, I tried to hire a Corbyn lookalike to cavort in bed with. There were plenty available, but the going rate at the Susan Scott Lookalikes agency was '£600 for up to three hours plus expenses plus VAT', which made me think it might be cheaper to hire the man himself.
So I settled for employing a much older male friend who looked nothing like Corbyn but was happy to star in a ridiculous video, and made him grow a white beard and wear specs and a Lenin cap. I then wrote every visual gag I could into the script. J-Corbz's barely-suppressed lust for Diane Abbott? Check. Me giving birth to Corbyn's baby dressed in a Labour t-shirt? Check. The two of us smoking post-coital Cuban cigars? Check (or it would have been, if my eBay delivery hadn't gone missing).
The video was a wrap, and we were gearing up to put it out when disaster struck: the UK General Election was called. It was almost as if Theresa May didn't care about a suitable release date for 'Love Song for Jeremy Corbyn'. We had to make some frantic last-minute changes, but the premise (set in the future) still worked. Some die-hard Corbynite friends may hate it, but most people think it's funny. It might be jokey as well as earnest, but I'll definitely be voting Labour this time, after voting Green in 2015. And if Corbyn himself wants to get in touch, well, I'll be waiting and hoping.
You can view the video here.