My mate David

Alumnus to be proud of No. 91 is determined to leave no stone unturned in his bid to become the archetypal eccentric scientist.

David Bellamy, the much-loved hirsute expert on things that live under stones, is to challenge John Major in Huntingdon on behalf of Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum party.

Those looking to the Marmite party's post-election future may like to note that Professor Bellamy, who held a chair at Durham in the early 1980s, has a record of association with institutions that subsequently lose their identity through mergers. He was a student at Chelsea College of Science and Technology (now part of King's College, London) and Bedford College (very firmly subsumed within Royal Holloway).