As the contest to replace Boris Johnson draws towards its protracted close, we should remember that many of the original 12 nominees told us they intend to ‘throw their hat in the ring’. I have been asked where this expression comes from. Well, as far as we have been able to discover, it comes from boxing – from the early days of bare- knuckle fighting in Great Britain. That takes us back to the early 1800s when all men wore hats, and bare-knuckle fights were often held outdoors, in a field in summer. So, you need to picture a crowd gathered around an open space on the grass with a champion boxer challenging anyone in the crowd to take him on. There is some evidence that the way a young man could respond was to step forward and ‘throw his hat into the ring’. It must have been a bit like Jimmy Sharman’s famous travelling boxing tent show here in Australia – but without the gloves. At those shows the travelling boxers would stand rippling their muscles on a platform outside the tent while the barker (Jimmy Sharman himself) would challenge local youngsters to take on his champions. We have a quote from 1805 of someone taking up that sort of challenge from the Sporting Magazine: ‘Belcher appeared confident of success (in a boxing match), and threw his hat into the ring, as an act of defiance to his antagonist’. Sometimes there wasn’t a champion to challenge, just an empty ring – and once two hats had been thrown in, the contest could begin. There is a quote from 1810 from a publication called the Mirror of Taste about a young man throwing his hat into the ring, and the umpire calling on anyone in the crowd to take up his challenge. When a second hat came flying through the air and landed in the ring the umpire called, ‘The challenge is answered’. So, it began with literal hats leading to a literal fight. Nowadays, of course, it is all metaphorical – when anyone takes up any challenge, they can be said to have thrown their hat in the ring.