The people of Leicester have the chance to send a Loony to London.
Monster Raving Loony Party leader Howling Laud Hope is standing as a candidate in the high-profile Leicester South by-election on May 5.
He is hoping to become MP following Sir Peter Soulsby's resignation.
The 68-year-old eccentric, real name Alan Hope, took over the leadership of the wacky party after the death of the party's founder Screaming Lord Sutch, in 1999.
He was joint leader, alongside his pet cat, Cat Mandu, until the unfortunate feline died in a road accident in 2002.
Since then,Mr Hope has led the Raving Loonies single-handedly.
The party has honed its message over the years, and has now shifted from being an intentionally humorous outsider party to one hoping to win the votes of those who are angry at modern politics.
Mr Hope said: "If I can get a significant number of votes wouldn't that make the other parties sit up and wonder why that was happening?
"Voting for me is not a wasted vote, wasted votes are ones that don't get used at all.
"The majority of people in this country don't bother to vote, and if all the people who don't vote voted for us, we would be in Government."
The party is now sponsored by William Hill. He has dismissed claims that it cheapens his party by saying: "It is nothing compared to what all those MPs were getting up to in the run-up to the expenses scandal."
Mr Hope was the first-ever Raving Loony candidate to be elected to public office when he was elected unopposed to a seat on Ashburton Town Council in Devon in 1987.
The publican has since stood in several by-elections and General Elections.
In the 2003 Brent East by-election, he gained 59 votes in a contest won by the Liberal Democrat candidate and former Melton schoolgirl Sarah Teather.
Mr Hope then stood as a candidate in Aldershot in the 2005 General Election, where he took sixth and last place with 553 votes.
His most significant success was in the Bootle by-election in 1990 when he achieved a higher poll rating than Lord Owen's Social Democrats.
In last year's General Election, Mr Hope stood under the banner of the Monster Raving Loony William Hill Party for the parliamentary seat of Witney, in Oxfordshire, against the sitting MP and Conservative party leader David Cameron.
He gained 234 votes, while Mr Cameron retained the seat and became Prime Minister.
In March this year, he won 198 votes and came eighth in the Barnsley Central by-election.
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