Whenever Parliament returns - and the exact date is in doubt owing to Mrs May's ongoing talks with the DUP - there is one person who will not be lining the streets and cheering with joy when our representatives go back to their day job. For one forgotten hero, their arrival will deliver only hard work and long hours. His name is Hans Ard, and he has been working in the commons since 1771, and though he may be very well preserved for his years, he admits he is "feeling my age".
Known to over-familiar backbenchers as 'German Hans', although he is actually from Alsace in France, Mr Ard, MBE, is responsible for bringing us the reality of what goes on during Commons debates, writing it down word-for-word. This dignified figure, who wears grey flannel tails and is dapper in a waxed moustache ("Please do not compare me to the fool Poirot," he pleads, still smarting from a Telegraph profile piece in the spring), records the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary speeches in longhand with a fountain pen and Indian ink, in impeccable script. Ask him if that's not somewhat antiquated, and he smiles with the gentle tolerance of a man who has been asked the question many times before.
"It may be antiquated," he says, his voice now bearing only a trace of his birthplace, "but it still works perfectly. And it's really not so bad. When I started here, the politicians insisted I write down their words in calligraphy, because it made them look more important. But," he adds with a twinkle, "at least they didn't request illumination."
Mr Ard shrugs at the day-to-day dramas of his workplace. "Everyone gets so excited, but they are only here temporarily. Perhaps that's why they are so angry much of the time: they realise that the life of an MP is short and they will soon return to obscurity. Those of us who are permanently in that condition know the reality of life."
All the same, he has not only witnessed drama, he has lived it. He was jailed during the Second World War as a potential fifth columnist. After three months of the harsh winter of 1939-40 spent in an unheated hut in an internment camp outside Oakham, Rutland, he was released thanks to the personal intervention of Churchill, who Hans regards as the greatest parliamentarian he has ever met. "A lovely man," he says. "He always had time for minor functionaries such as myself, knew all our names and would bring me a cigar on saints days. After he arranged for my release, he used to joke that, 'I had better not be a sodding German spy after all this!'" He may joke, but the internment left its mark: he supports Amnesty International, his one concession to personal political activism.
Mr Ard is too gallant to say which MPs he disliked, though he does turn his nose up a little when he hears the name Michael Gove. Instead, his open contempt is reserved for MPs who filibuster, saying "They just take up reams of fine parchment with total rubbish. Jacob Rees-Mogg once spoke for hours trying to give Somerset its own time zone. It is little wonder that I have suffered from RSI. But the work goes on."
Mr Ard is no fan of modern technology; he has seen off the threat of televised debates, which, he insists, "just flicker on a screen and are gone, but my work is permanent". He is so averse to electronics that he won't even scan his shopping through the self-service checkout at the Little Waitrose near his small, immaculately tidy flat in Pimlico.
He walks the two miles to and from the Commons each day, rain or shine. A bachelor, he says "I am married to the job", but he loves seeing his great-great-great nephews and nieces, of which there are "37 - and I know all their birthdays", he says proudly, as if it could be any other way. So spare a thought for Mr Ard, the forgotten hero of our Democracy. While the rest of the political world is shouting, he works on quietly - for all our benefit.
