... And To Top It Off, He's Got Belinda for a Cabinet Minister

History Television is running this docucomedy series, The Worst Jobs in History. Just for fun, they did an opinion poll. Guess who in Canada has the worst job?

... almost half of Canadians (44%) think that the Prime Minister has one of the worst jobs in the country. At 55%, Quebeckers were the most likely to think it is one of the worst jobs.

It makes sense, in a way. As PM, you spend half of your waking hours trying to convince a skeptical press corps that you know what you're doing, and the other half trying to convince Parliamentarians not to throw you out. Those news pundits who propel you forward one day will stick a rhetorical dagger in your back the next. And those bloggers, those pesky bloggers ...

There's also the possibility that the sample misunderstood the question: does the PM have one of the worst jobs, or has the PM done one of the worst jobs?

The survey also reveals that almost 1 out of 5 (17%) Canadians would bewilling to work as the "Groom of the Stool" and clean King Henry VIII's behind for $100,000 a year. Albertans were the most likely (21%) to take on the unpleasant job.

Well, sure -- Albertans are smart enough to figure there's more to gain in cleaning Henry's behind than, say, Jack Layton's.

The majority of Canadians (37%) also consider collecting leeches by stomping through swamps with bare legs to be the worst job in history. This ranked ahead of treading wool cloth in a barrel of stale human urine (28%), cleaning a knight's soiled armour after battle (10%) and making violin strings from sheep intestines (9%).

Hmmm.