Political reporter literally eats his hat after failed election prediction

On Thursday, the Financial Times’ chief political correspondent breezily dismissed the Chesham and Amersham by-election chances of the Liberal Democrats.

Quote-tweeting a BBC News article stating that polling stations had opened, Jim Pickard wrote: “Seeing lots of excited speculation today but I’ll eat my hat if the Lib Dems win here - one of the most true blue seats in the country.”

Well, they won. And folks online demanded that he deliver on his promise. A taste of trilby. A fried fedora. A battered bucket hat. A salted snapback. People weren’t fussy, they just wanted to see one of the nation’s esteemed members of the press tucking into some headwear.

Lawyer David Allen Green turned up the heat, joking that Pickard had created a binding contract with his promise:

Dan Hodges, he of many disastrous political predictions, was quick to pile in to hold him to account:

And Jess Brammar suggested it was all enough excitement to keep her on Twitter for a little bit longer:

And you know what? Pickard delivered. And we, well, take our hat off to him.

First, he teased four different potential culinary delights, musing ‘choices, choices’.

The top two hats looked pretty wooly/meaty for a first-time hat muncher, so we can see why he swerved those.

He also had a pretty slick New York Yankees cap in contention, but you don’t want eat and destroy memories of a nice trip to the Big Apple. And he didn’t.

That left his RKID branded hat which he proceeded to cut up, then appear to munch, in a Twitter video captioned ‘penance’.

In it, he says: “In an ideal world I'd probably have some kind of side-dish to make it more pleasant, but resources are tight, and time is short.”

He begins snipping off pieces of material to eat, then decides to trim them into smaller chunks to make them more palatable.

The doomed hatTwitter/Jim Pickard

He then scoffs a small piece, and washes it down with a glass of water. He rated it as a 1/10 for flavour, and noted that the nutritional value of a hat is pretty limited.

He followed up with a second bite, then seemed to have had his fill.

"Let's hope it's not toxic because there's one thing worse than a stupid tweet - it's death by hat-eating."

A gulp of water to help it go downTwitter/Jim Pickard

Krishnan Guru-Murthy was particularly worried, demanding an end to the madness so Pickard could continue his fine work in the nation’s political lobby.

We’re sure he’ll survive. And at the very least, his reputation as a man of his word will remain untarnished forevermore: “I like to think I can say that I’ve kept my word,” he added.