With Liz Truss becoming the 56th British prime minister, it got me thinking about how many PMs there have been in my lifetime. The answer is 16, going back to Clement Atlee, which is a bit scary. In fact, while I was still residing in the UK there were only six PMs.
I was fortunate enough to have been brought up in an era when for the first time British prime ministers and politicians had become regarded as legitimate targets of fun from television comedy and satirical shows.
In the late 1950s I recall my grandmother laughing her head off when comedian Tony Hancock did a brief impersonation of prime minister Harold Macmillan. Hancock was having a shave and had given himself a lathery shaving cream "moustache" closely resembling that of Macmillan. Hancock proceeded to come out with the PM's catchphrase, a grandiloquent "you've never had it so good".
