Caine and Unable

The election has been enthralling the nation for minutes now; Camilla has even broken her leg launching herself off a Scottish mountain in a crazed bid to escape the excitement (or possibly Charlie reciting 'The Old Man of Lochnagar' to her yet again - details are still confused). Despite this jollity, there was a gaping void in the campaign - the lack of celebrities. Has Paul Daniels issued his traditional threat to leave the country if Labour wins? Is Tess Daly no longer interested in the married couples tax allowance? Does Sir Alex Ferguson think postponing the National Insurance rise is "typical Conservatives"? But wait, what's this? Why, if it isn't Sir Michael Cockney, exhumed by the Cameronservatives to speak in favour of its new wheeze, a National Citizen Service.

Caine, a sprightly 105 years old, proved that actors really do need to stick to the script. He began by whingeing about his national service, which he "hated"; he then appeared to think the election was already over, referring to the Conservatives as "the Government". Caine then droned about his younger days running around the Elephant and Castle and blathered: "I'm a representative of all those young people who have been forgotten in this country". Caine and Cameron then buggered off to a school where a bewildered Caine was sat next to a youth with an orange afro of Millennium Dome dimensions. Caine sympathised with the deprived youngsters before getting into his chauffeur-driven car for the short drive back to his Chelsea mansion.

Cameron, who was successfully removed from his conjoined twin Sam at Great Ormond Street that morning, revealed that he had performed voluntary service when a pink-faced, annoying teenager: " I visited elderly and vulnerable people near Windsor". That should bring back happy memories if Dave wins the election and is presented to Lizzie and Phil the Greek: "Hell's teeth, Liz, it's that bloody awful little oik who wanted to clean our windows. Here's 10p, now sod off!"

Speaking of bloody oiks, Boris has been allowed out! The floppy-haired, generously-girthed, serial philanderer accompanied Dave to the Royal Chelsea Hospital, where grizzled veterans of affairs with John Terry and Ashley Cole, many with terrible wounds, are cared for. Bozza arrived on his bike and declared to the security guard: "The future Prime Minister is visiting today", although whether he was referring to Cameron or himself was unclear. Cameron looked overjoyed to see Bozza; at one point he nearly looked at him. Hacks were gagging for a Boris gaffe and, after a period of inarticulate rumbling and hair tugging, he duly delivered. Over tea and cakes in the sunshine, Cameron expounded about the bloody silly voluntary National Citizen Service, much to the incomprehension of the red-coated heroes. Suddenly Boris woke up, sprayed crumbs, performed hair origami, and bellowed: "Why don't we make it compulsory?" There was a momentary embarrassed silence, the Chelsea pensioners commiserated with Dave on the shocking conduct of his fat brother, and the whole visit was swiftly curtailed.

Sam Cam enjoyed her new found freedom by wandering around a garden centre near Leeds. Elegantly attired in some clothes on her body and her legs, she pointed at some shrubs and looked at begonias before retiring to a local transport cafe she called "Daddy's mansion", where she enjoyed an agreeable luncheon of Peasant Pie, Roasted Grayling, Posh Tart, washed down by 6 cans of Carlsberg. Her opponent, Sarah Brown, was said to be "discomfited" by a heckler who yelled at her: "Will you get your husband to tell the truth?". The heckler was believed to be a disturbed multi-millionaire from Liverpool, Mrs Cherie Blair.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are reprising that great '70s sitcom, 'On the Buses', albeit with considerably funnier policies and less enlightened attitudes towards women. 'Inspector' Cable can frequently be heard groaning, "I'll get you, Cleggy", as the hapless Clegg promises not to increase VAT and pinches Sarah Teather's bum. They are careering unnoticed around the country in their Battle Bus, a vomit-yellow monstrosity, occasionally picking up passengers in a bid to raise much needed campaign funds. The Ministry of Defence is rumoured to be interested in purchasing the bus to replace the heavily armoured tandems, currently used to transport 'our boys' in Helmand.

We now have the first casualty of the campaign: Stuart MacLennan, Labour candidate in Moray, has been caught posting obscene and abusive tweets. Many are too foul mouthed to repeat on a respectable blog but the most reprehensible included: "Vote Labour", "A Future Fair for All", and, most unforgiveably, "Gordon Brown will serve five more years as PM. Am drunk again". The Cabinet were united in condemning the last tweet, calling it "disgraceful" and "totally unacceptable behaviour".

Finally, the most grotesque image of the day. Lib Dem activists in disgraced Geoff 'Buff' Hoon's former constituency, Ashfield, have labelled the Labour candidate, raven-haired ex-GMTV presenter Gloria Del Piero, "Geoff Hoon in a skirt". Mr Hoon was understandably outraged: "The Lib Dems know that I never wear a skirt, although for £3,000 a day + VAT, I promise to do absolutely anything you want. Fancy a good time, mister?".

Election!

At damn bloody last! Yes, Gordon Brown took the short journey to the Palace on Tuesday to ask Lizzie von Windsor to dissolve Parliament and launch the 2010 General Election. Frenzied excitement ensued: Corin Redgrave popped his clogs; Lenny Henry and Dawn French announced their marriage was over due to 'irreconcilable differences over how to reduce the deficit', and the 24 hour news media became immediately absurd. Helicopters clattered above Whitehall, media tents were erected opposite Parliament, and a gaunt Nicholas Witchell somehow penetrated the tight security around Buckingham Palace. The Sky News royal correspondent appeared to be hopelessly in love with the Queen: "She is such a polite and pleasant person" he oozed, as if reassuring us that she would not scream at Brown: "EFF OFF OUT OF MY PALACE, YOU GREY-SKINNED GIT!".

Dave Cameron launched his campaign on the South Bank opposite Parliament, surrounded by young, beautiful Tories who must all, inexplicably, have been waiting to take a turn around the London Aquarium at exactly the time he rolled up. Cameron declared that he would be campaigning on behalf of the 'The Great Ignored', who appeared to comprise absolutely everybody above the age of 18. Brown, meanwhile, ordered his surly mob of a Cabinet ouside Number 10 to prove that: "I am not a team of one but one of a team" before boring everybody by banging on about his 'ordinary middle-class background'; the strain of suppressing yawns and grimaces was evident on all the Cabinet's faces - apart from David Miliband whose face is fixed in a permanent grimace. Clegg appeared in front of a pair of revolving doors with Vince Cable, who looked at his leader with ill-disguised contempt.

Brown was then chased through the streets of London by Sky's roving helicopter, like a scene from 'The Fugitive'. He took shelter in St Pancras Station where, fortuitously, a group of adolescent Labour supporters just happened to be hanging about on the concourse. Brown bulldozed through the station, yawping at people and brutally stroking kids with his great clunking fist. He later turned up at a Morrisons in Kent, where he proceeded to garner votes by pushing in front of old ladies in the checkout queue, laughing very loudly at innocuous comments, and invading the staff canteen and ruining the lunchtime Pot Noodles of Janice and Wayne from the sweets counter. One spotty dude, sensing glory, asked him: "Do you fancy a job here?", a question Brown was significantly unable to answer. Cameron fled northwards to a hospital in Birmingham where he immediately rolled up his sleeves (copyright: T. Blair) and shed his tie (ditto) and interrogated bemused, ill Brummies about how good the food was. Still, didn't the equine Sam Cameron look nice in them clothes things she was wearing? I do hope Sarah Brown wears some clothes things too.......

Casualty City

Nurse: Hello, are you the new doctor?

Doctor: Yes, I am. Oh dear……

Nurse: What is it?

Doctor: I think there is already a simmering sexual tension between us, a tension which will be unaffected by scenes of blood and gore all around us.

Nurse: My God, you’re right. I am now looking at you with adoring, hero-worshipping eyes.

Charlie Fairface: Get ready everybody, there’s been a desperately unlikely and tortuously convoluted multiple accident. Expect a lot of badly injured character actors, many of whom have appeared in the series before, and in other programmes you cannot quite place but will certainly include The Bill. Here we go.

Patient: Ouch…..oh God…….ouch, that smarts…….I’m a distinctly dodgy patient with an obscure and tedious rift with my daughter. We loathe each other but, thanks to a graze on my left shin and interference into other people’s private lives by a nurse, we will resolve our lifelong differences in under an hour……

Fairface: Get me an intravenous stethoscraper and 400.567millipedes of oxy riboenucleooxyurehtramoxin………….

Nurse: Sorry, Charlie, I was just wondering how many times you are going to leave the series, live in Ghana or Coventry, and come back again for no apparent reason. Fancy a drink to celebrate?

Fairface: OK, everybody, 1, 2, 3…

(Sound of people straining to lift a patient and the patient’s cries of pain)

Patient: ‘Ere Nurse, I’m a seedy old bloke who will continually pester you with suggestive or racist remarks. You will respond with a weary sigh and by asking all your colleagues if they fancy a drink after work, even though it is never clear what time of night your shift actually ends.

Voice: Where’s my son? I need to see my son so we can have a row about the most intimate family secrets in front of a crowd of strangers.

Fairface: Ah, here’s the handsome, brilliant, but mentally unstable surgeon

Surgeon: Hi, I left Eastenders expecting to be cast in a major new drama series but that didn’t work out and I ended up here instead…………..Nurse, fall in love with me……..Charlie, look empathetic and concerned………….I need to find a hopelessly caricatured faceless bureaucrat I can argue with about resources……….

Fairface: That’s it, I resign………….

Is there anybody out there?

To the Wellcome Collection to hear Seth Shostak of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute give a talk on the search for evidence of alien beings out there in the cold, relatively large Universe. I keep thinking his surname is Shakatak - was he also the creative genius behind the greatest of the awful Brit-funk bands of the '80's? They did produce an album called 'Out of this World'.......No, he wasn't, he's an astronomer.

There is an agreeably cold wind blowing down the Euston Road, forcing the Cockneys to swaddle themselves in jellied eels to keep warm. I partake of a rancid Heineken costing £3.bleedin'45 in the Northumberland Arms on Tottenham Court Road, served by a brutish barmaid who resembles Mussolini. Avoid.

Before the talk, an element of chaos intrudes. The lights are dimmed, raised, dimmed, then raised again for no apparent reason. One member of the audience continually stomps up and down the stairs as if wearing hobnailed boots. After being told to hold it about six inches from our mouths, a trial of the roving microphones is abruptly halted after one old chap decides to speak with it seemingly halfway down his throat. His voice booms around the auditorium causing much tutting and tittering amongst the assembled throng.

Shostak, despite a dour appearance, proves to be a fascinating and witty character. He is scathingly forthright on the amount of people, predominantly silly Yanks, who contact him every day to inform him they have personal knowledge of aliens. He denies the US Government would step in if we finally do receive an alien signal and keep the whole thing secret. He is relentlessly optimistic that we will eventually make contact with aliens although, slightly disappointingly, he thinks it will be with machine rather than biological intelligence. No little green men with long pointy fingers then.

The microphone bellower returns to the fray during questions and expresses concern that inter-galactic warfare would inevitably result if contact was made. Shostak dismisses this, saying the 'transport costs' involved in any such conflict would be too high. The microphone is quickly wrenched from his hand just as he is about to roar another daft question. A young lady prefaces her question by inexplicably bragging: "I belong to no organisation but I am a lovely person", instantly disproving the last part of her sentence. Unfortunately, I do not get chance to ask Shostak whether he agrees with Jeff Wayne that"the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one". Perhaps he only knows about Brit-funk anyway.

What the Dickens?

To the Bishopsgate Institute, bangslap in the middle of the Square Mile, the Temple of Mammon, the Belly of the Beast, The Den of.........sorry.......overdraft extension been turned down. Emerging from Moorgate station I am made aware of a sudden aridity in the oesophagal region but, oh the pubs in this Slough of Despond, this Bedlam of................(all I wanted was an extra 50 quid!)...........but I digress. I enter one establishment near Liverpool Street and my jaw is thwacked by a steaming babel of bellowing testosteronic inanity. I am forced to dart furtively down a side street to find a decent pub with some actual human beings inside.

A young lady behind me tells her companion in a doom-laden tone: "She hasn't been on her Facebook page since October. I'm very worried about her". The digital equivalent of milk bottles remaining uncollected outside the front door. I quench lingering aridity with another cheeky one in Dirty Dick's (don't Google it).

I am in the Pit of Malevolence, the Bowels of...........apply cold flannel to forehead......... to attend a discussion on 'Dickens's Tales of the City', looking at how London influenced the life and work of bearded scribbler and adulterer Charlie Dickens, author of such timeless classics as 'A Tale of Two Twists', 'Great Dorrit's Papers' and 'Barnaby Chuzzlepip and the Goblet of Doom'. The fading grandeur of the hall is enlivened by a table groaning under bottles of wine. I seek to alleviate the burden.

Fings wot I learned, innit:

- Charlie D used to hire a couple of bobbies to protect him on his nocturnal forays into the rookeries of Old London Town
- Omnibus drivers apparently used to just grab people and haul them on board even if they had no desire to go anywhere
- Chazza was such a stickler for order he used to inspect his kid's bedrooms every morning and leave little notes detailing any failings. Daft Victorian bleeder.
- Waterloo Bridge was known as 'The Bridge of Sighs' as so many of the bereft and the lovelorn would volley themselves into the Thames from its ramparts

One of the participants then gave a spirited rendition of one of Dickens's short stories. Sadly, a member of the audience, clearly well-refreshed, had to leave to inspect the facilities and I missed most of it. On conclusion of the talk, I seek to alleviate the table's burden still further.

Nearing home, I realise I am in thrall to the grape and duck into a local hostelry to indulge in a few more glasses of fruity red, washed down with a delicious duck and smoked sausage cassoulet. Must ask the bank for overdraft extension.

The Speaker speaks at a speech

To Portcullis House to hear the House of Commons Speaker, Big Johnny Bercow, give a speech on Parliament or something. Gratifyingly, the Attlee Suite was punishingly stuffy but, even more gratifyingly, free wine was on offer. I chose the red and took my seat. The lady in front of me turned round to reveal a strikingly pink face framed by ice-white hair, making her look like one of those little gibbons you see on the Richard Attenborough animal show.

A hush descends as Bercow, small in stature but stentorian of voice, takes to the dais (or is it a podium?). His speech is peppered with the tinkling sound of wine glasses being carelessly booted over by clumsy buggers. Carelessly late people continue to invade the room, including two violently ginger students who sit in a corner and bestow adolescent smirks on the congregation.

Sadly, the Q & A session is hijacked by a bearded monomaniac from UKIndependence Party who rumbles something tedious about the Lisbon Treaty, supported by a comrade-in-boredom. Bercow deflects them with faux olde-worlde courtesy: "Sir, prithee, mayhap thou wilt find that verily, sir, with the utmost and enduring respect.......". The crowd is getting restless; a 'reception' will follow and cognitive processes are turning to canapes and, dare to dream, vol-au-vents.

Finally, the speech is over and the crowd moves, nay surges, to the next room to be confronted by a paltry smattering of plates hosting unidentifiable splodges of food. Is that mackerel? Perhaps its a sausage? No, its aardvark croquettes smeared with vanilla pesto. There is much pushing, gouging, pinching and slapping; ligaments snap, cartilages tear as the crowd hoovers up the fare. Little cartons of fries with a desultory lump of fish are brought out and quickly consumed. One woman's plate of chicken (or it could have been walrus) is overturned by a wayward elbow. The UKIP contingent wield cocktails sticks with unerring precision. I scoff with voracious efficiency and demand my skip load of free wine before heading off, diffusing vinous essence, into the night.

Westminster wreath laying ceremony

Attended moving little ceremony in Westminster Abbey to mark the birthday of Keats. Wreath laid, 'Bright Star declaimed, Lord's Prayer intoned amid tourist cacophony. When a child, I was fascinated by the Abbey's gloomy splendour and ancient monuments. Now, it seemed a lot smaller than childhood memories. Henry VII's Chapel still a glowing Gothic marvel. Nice to stand on the gravestone of the Great Cham himself.

Unpleasantly humid outside. Then to the National Gallery for short talk on Salvator Rosa's tenebrous 'Witches at their Incantations'. His self-portrait glowers at us from along the wall.

Derby lose miserably to Ipswich, who haven't won a match since LBJ was in the White House. Relegation threatens.