Rainbow George Weiss
Rainbow George Weiss (born 13 October 1940), son of a diamond merchant, is a fringe UK political candidate who stood in 13 constituencies in the 2005 General Election.
He founded his own parties from the proceeds of the sale of a house in Hampstead, North London which he moved into in 1969 but stopped paying rent in 1984; remaining there as a squatter. He made a profit of £710,000 on the sale of the house in 2004 after HM Land Registry awarded him ownership of the property. He is proposing a "preferendum" where voters choose individual policies from amongst those offered by each of the major parties.
He was for many years the neighbour of comedian Peter Cook, and released an album of some of his personal home recordings featuring Cook under the title Over At Rainbows after Cook died in 1995. The recordings feature a few of the phone conversations between LBC radio's Clive Bull and Peter Cook under the guise of a Norwegian fisherman called Sven, many of which were made from Weiss's home.
In July 2006, Weiss disclosed on the Clive Bull radio show that he had about £50,000 remaining from the windfall; however, by February 2007 he was giving the more ambiguous description of "somewhere under £50,000". Also during February of that year, Weiss announced he was standing as a candidate in the Belfast by-elections and was subsequently banned from appearing on the Clive Bull show until they were over.
Politics
Weiss founded his own political party, the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket, and first stood for the European Parliament in 1994 in the London Central constituency. He stood in the 2001 General Election for the Belfast East constituency where he won a total of 91 votes (0.2% of those cast). Weiss has spent considerable time and money organising an unofficial postal referendum to ask the people of Belfast whether they would like the city to be renamed "Best City", a name inspired by the late Northern Ireland football player George Best. With the celebrity endorsement of former professional snooker player Alex Higgins, the referendum took place in 2006 at an estimated cost (to Weiss) of £100,000. Only 2000 votes were returned, which means George effectively paid £50 for each vote he got.
Weiss was a candidate at the Brent East by-election standing for the www.xat.org party in 2003, won by Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, where he came bottom of a list of 16 candidates with just eleven votes. While this vote was considerably low, lower votes had previously been registered, for example in the 1988 by-election in Kensington a candidate had polled just five votes.[1] The Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket election record was also "surpassed" at the 2005 General election when British model Catherine Taylor-Dawson stood for the party in Cardiff North and achieved a single vote, though not from Taylor-Dawson herself, who wasn't eligible to vote in that constituency. Weiss himself set a new election record by simultaneously standing in 12 constituencies, beating Tom Keen of the Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain's previous record of 10.
He stood in all four Belfast constituencies during the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election. Standing for his Make Politicians History Party, he came third last in South Belfast and last in the three other constituencies with a total of 221 first preference votes. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams gave him a sixth preference vote in West Belfast.[2][3]
Radio phone-ins
Known as "George from Hampstead", or, in light of his Belfast referendum plans, "George Looney", Weiss is a regular caller to the Clive Bull show on London radio station LBC, promoting his latest political ideas. He also calls talkSPORT late at night. However, he is usually referred to as "Rainbow George" when calling that station. Occasionally he phones BBC Radio Five Live, where he is treated as a normal caller and usually gets cut off as soon as he attempts to publicise his own political agenda.
On 13 August 2007 Weiss phoned in and revealed his plans for London in the year 2020, which included turning the M25 into a "wonderwall" and London becoming "the party capital of the world", financed by "the bank of a zillion wonders" in which everyone would be an account holder and "the wonder" would be the base currency with a rate of one hundred "gasps" to the "wonder".
Weiss also calls BBC London 94.9 a lot at night time and sometimes in the daytime. During 2012 and up to and including 2015, he has called the Nick Abbot show on LBC, using the pseudonym "Sterling Silver".
The Russell Brand Show
On 13 and 20 October 2007, and more recently on 14 July 2008 and 11 October 2008, Rainbow George appeared on The Russell Brand Show on Radio 2 in order to publicize his political agenda, inviting Brand to take leadership of the party (of which Brand was sceptical) and announcing an online petition requiring one million votes in order for the party to become recognized as a serious candidate in future elections.
During his appearance on the show on 14 June 2008, he told Brand that he had placed a bet on space ships appearing at the closing ceremony of the Olympic games in China, and invited him to take a one-third share in the bet, as well as to join him for some 'Boris Dancing' (named after mayor of London Boris Johnson) on Hampstead Heath.