Just how bright are the voting public? Well the answer is not very many if the following survey, out today, is anything to go by...
Twenty per cent of Britons believe the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Blackadder are based on real historical personalities, others believe there was a real Captain Mainwaring leading the nation's home defence during the war and that Dad's Army was based on him while some people think Clark Kent aka Superman and Indiana Jones were genuine people too, according to Ask Jeeves.
The confusion between fact and fiction goes both ways, it has emerged, with other respondents to the survey believing Che Guevara, Florence Nightingale and outlaw Jesse James were fictional, not real.
Ask Jeeves commissioned the survey after noticing a rise in the number of queries it receives asking for biographies and other personal details such as a family tree, for fictional characters.
And a poll of 1,000 adults found a fifth of people struggled to tell the difference between onscreen characters and true-life figures.
Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation Sherlock Holmes has been most recently seen in a Guy Ritchie blockbuster and a hit BBC series yet 21 per cent of people surveyed thought the detective was a real person
So this beggars the question is Vic a real person or just a fictional character we keep reading about? All comments about a cardboard cut will be deleted...
