Election '97: Fame game could make all the difference on the big day break

So, you say, as you stand in your polling-booth on Thursday. What is the clinching factor here? Tax? Europe? The NHS?

Or will you say "I must vote for Mr Blair because any man backed by Ben Elton and Richard "Victor Meldrew" Wilson is the one for me. Even though Mick Hucknall's another one and his love songs make me want to vomit."

It's obvious. Isn't it? Celebrity endorsements are a curious matter. Sean Connery may be handsome, but would anything less than a personal canvassing session convert even the biggest female fan to Scottish Nationalism? Comic Jim Davidson is true blue but the description is normally applied to his jokes, not his politics. As he strolled the streets with National Heritage Secretary Virginia Bottomley, did she really consider him an electoral asset?

Tony Robinson is a terribly nice man who plays a stupid, smelly character, Baldrick. Does being television's Mr Downtrodden help highlight policies for the poor and disadvantaged? Well, maybe.

Research by the advertising agency Bates Dorland indicated that with the two main parties sounding so alike, endorsements by a favourite star can count.

So let's take another look. In the red corner stand Anita Roddick, Sir Terence Conran and arch-luvvie Lord Attenborough. If you're a film-loving gourmand who worries whether rabbits have died in the cause of kissable lips, Labour is obviously for you.

The blue corner boasts Frank Bruno, Lord Lloyd-Webber and (some of) the Spice Girls. There must be times when John Major rolls his eyes to the ceiling in despair.

Is it strictly necessary, he must ponder, for Paul Daniels to sing the Tories' praises and speak of emigrating should Mr Major not get back in? Could this not prove Labour's biggest asset? Vote Blair and banish all irritating magicians forthwith.

Friendship is a fine thing but someone should have told Neil Hamilton that Bill Roache, aka Coronation Street's Ken Barlow, was passe. Given the rival soaps' ratings, he needed Joe Nicholls, the Labour-voting stud in EastEnders. Sir Peter Ustinov and John Cleese both have fine senses of humour. They back Paddy Ashdown and the Liberal Democrats.

Sir James Goldsmith has support from the millionaire zoo owner John Aspinall and a Referendum Party candidate in the genial, if eccentric, television naturalist David Bellamy. Yet surely a madcap willingness to hack through hostile terrain is no preparation for life in Parliament.

Except now you come to mention it ...