What's on the other side?

The nation has been able to forget its woes, ignore the freezing weather and celebrate joyfully, at the wonderful news that .. err .. there are going to be three televised debates between Messrs. Brown, Cameron and Clegg. Hurrah!

Or, perhaps more accurately, meh. What a total waste of fucking time.

The TV companies - BBC, Sky and ITV are doubtless rubbing their fat, well-manicured hands with glee at the extra viewers - and extra revenue - these 'historic' events will bring.

Boy, are they in for a surprise.

Do you know what, guys? Not as many people as you might think are going to be keen to sit and watch three middle-aged men in expensive suits lying to each other. No, really.

The few that might will be turned right off the idea by the endless gravelly-voiced adverts which will be pounded into our skulls for fucking weeks beforehand: "Coming soon. For the first time in British History ...". You can hear it now.

The debates themselves will, of course, be virtually devoid of content, and utterly meaningless.

Brown will be dosed to the eyeballs with a cocktail of drugs, and his script will have been crafted carefully by a vast team of writers.

He's never been recorded as having answered a question put to him, and this won't be the occasion he starts, will it? He'll read out an enormous list of supposed Labour achievements, followed by a shorter list of lies about what the eevil Tories plan to do, then his mouth wil slump open, and we'll all be none the wiser.

CallMeDave will look very shiny, and will bang on about boom 'n' bust, and perhaps slip in a mention of his wind turbine. But guess what, CMD? We've heard all that before.

The boy Clegg will work himself into a lather of fake-indignation about something - Iraq, or Joanna Lumley's little chums, or something Vince told him about banks that he doesn't really understand, and find himself trapped in a single issue with nothing else to add. The two other leaders will probably starting chatting to each other while he's speaking.

And, then, when the bovine public have watched this tedious festival of soundbites, what will they do?

Imagine if one of these talking heads actually did impress someone? "I like that nice Mr Cameron, I'm gonna to vote for 'im".

Well, dear voter, unfortunately you can't just press the Red Button on your Sky remote. That won't cast a vote this time.

And no, Ant 'n' Dec won't be popping up with an 0800 number for you to phone either.

Did you think you should text the word 'CallMeDave' to the BBC? No, that won't work either. There's only one way to vote in this particular piece of reality TV.

What you've got to do is make sure your name is on something called the electoral register, and keep a safe hold of the postcard that was sent to you and then, on the day that .... Hello?  Hello?

Oh, they've gone.


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