Desperately Seeking Miriam

The greatest scandal of the campaign is, of course, the fact that Nick Clegg's wife, Senorita Miriam Gonzalez Durantez Pele Tapas de Silva Viva Espana Clegg, has arrogantly decided to go to work, and look after her children rather than walk submissively two paces behind her husband and smile vacantly at ogling hacks asking vacuous questions. Thankfully, this blatant snub to the electorate was rectified when Miriam joined Cleggy on a stunt on Saturday morning. Now, Miriam is an extremely elegant and intelligent woman so Lib Dem spinmeisters must have racked their brains for a suitable photo shoot to match her glittering presence. So they came up with the obvious - dry stone walling in a field just outside Sheffield! On a glorious morning, the loving pair trudged up a muddy field whilst photographers waded through cow pats to get that perfect shot. Clegg shook hands with a couple of horny handed sons of toil, who happened to be lounging against a gate before donning safety gloves and making a total hash of placing one rock on top of another. Health and safety reared its head when somebody asked Clegg if he wanted to wear safety goggles, which he declined, conjuring up potential headlines like: 'Clegg loses eyes and bit of his chin in incompetent wall building horror in field. Wife, wearing stylish off the shoulder Gucci jodhpurs, believed unhurt but sprayed with his blood'. I look forward to seeing Miriam doing some serious pipe lagging on the outskirts of Runcorn next week

Sunday saw great excitement in a Sutton Coldfield park. Sir Ian 'Beefy' Botham was embarking on another admirable charity walk and he was joined by one of Britain's greatest athletes, the complete and utter walker Dave 'Porkies' Cameron. Cameron joined Sir Beefy on a 4 mile walk, which quickly reduced him to levels of pinkness hitherto only seen on those funny little monkeys. Having seen Cameron in the flesh, I can confirm his skin really is as smooth and unblemished as it looks in the posters: he is the Morph of politics.

It is becoming clear how the party leaders handle the interaction with the 'ordinary people' they encounter on their stage managed jaunts across the country. Cameron has a jovial, baby-faced amiability about him, albeit with a bit too much 'Yah, Rupert's a bloody-good-bloke', Home Counties, shootin' and fishin', G & and T on the terrace, back-slapping bonhomie. Clegg is inoffensive and bland. Brown, though, is hopelessly wooden, openly uninterested in his interlocutors, and remorselessly incapable of the most basic pleasantries - hence Sarah's ubiquity. A typical Brown visit:

Voter: Morning, Mr Brown

Brown: Er.........A Future Fair for All..............

Voter: We've worked really hard to make this community centre work for the local youngsters.

Brown: Yes.....have you.......when are you...........er.............new regulatory architecture for global financial transactions........I'm more middle class than you.......

Voter: May I ask you about your policies,, Mr Brown?

Brown (panics): HELP!.....SARAH!....British jobs for British workers.....WHERE'S SARAH?.....(runs off, clutching his jowls).

Best howler so far: A Sky newsreader was talking about Labour's pisspoor campaign video which, she breathlessly informed us, was "narrated by the former David Who.....I mean, the former David Tennant". Nice to see Sky journalists have no difficulty distinguishing between reality and science fiction.