Not long to go now until 5 May when we are given the chance to determine who will represent the Neath constituency in the Welsh Assembly.
How many of you know who is standing in the Neath area? I bet not many of us know of or have even seen the candidates. It's a bit like that quiz question about the Magnificent Seven. How many of them can you name (answer at foot of article - have a go)?
Well it looks like we have our own Magnificent Seven in Neath with seven gunslingers riding into town to help save a decent, hardworking but downtrodden community from a bunch of bandits. Or was that just the film - I'm getting confused.
So who are these aspiring heroes (the Assembly candidates that is)?
1. Peter Crocker-Jaques, Welsh Conservatives
2. Jeremy Miles, Welsh Labour
3. Frank Little, Welsh Liberal Democrats
4. Alun Llewellyn, Plaid Cymru
5. Lisa Rapado, Wales Green Party
6. Richard Pritchard, UKIP
7. Stephen Hunt, Independent
I am not going to give you a critique of any of them. I'd hate to see their leaflets go unread, so if you want further information on either candidates or policies then read what's pushed through your letterbox instead of dumping it into the recycling bin. Sometimes, I like to hang on to them for a bit, just to look back in a few years time and say to myself, "Did I really fall for that?"
Six men, one woman, which is one better than the original Seven but hardly balanced when it comes to female representation. Pity that, although it is a woman they are replacing, not that many of us would know that. Maybe she played The Invisible Man - after all, if you never saw her how would you know if she was a man or woman?
If you remember the original film, I think four of the Seven were written out (killed off), one decided the Mexican village was so nice he stayed there, and Chris and Vin (the character names) rode off into the sunset. Of course, this won't happen here because we haven't really got marauding bandits, have we? And I doubt we've got that number of decent horses for them to ride out on, but we are certainly blessed with donkeys if you could stretch to accepting that.
Right - so you know the names of the candidates now. Have a bash at naming the original Magnificent Seven.
Yul Brynner
Steve McQueen
Horst Buchholz
Charles Bronson
Robert Vaughn
James Coburn
Brad Dexter
A remake film of the Magnificent Seven is scheduled to be released on September 23, 2016.
The Magnificent Seven was the first film my dad took me to, in the Empire Cinema, Bridgend. I'll never forget it, nor the final words of one of the villagers to Yul Brynner after it was all over. He said "You're like the wind, blowing over the land and... passing on... Vaya con Dios!". Which I guess in our case some might say will be life imitating art.
