Missed debating? A handy summary

It is quite possible that one or two of you missed the much-touted Clash of the Tight 'Uns, the Chancellor's Debate, last night.

Maybe you had to make sure that your grass was growing, now that spring is here, or possibly you had to supervise some wet paint, ensuring it was drying correctly.

For those of you who weren't glued to the television last night, let's just catch up with a quick summary of the debate, shall we?

The debate was skillfully refereed by a Channel 4 presenter, who looked a little like journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy might look if he'd eaten a lot of pies over a relatively short period.

For the Labour party, there was a middle aged man with quite astonishing eyebrows. He seemed to be Scottish, judging by his accent, so he probably gets on extremely well with the Prime Minister, another Scot.

He seemed very familiar with the referee, and with the other debaters, and they often referred to him in friendly terms, calling him 'Darling'.

It was a little confusing listening to this man speaking, as he seemed to have a lot of ideas about what the Chancellor should do next, and what the Chancellor shouldn't ever do, and how the country's finances should be managed in future. And yet apparently, he is the Chancellor, and has been for some time. Odd.

For the Conservative party, Ken Clarke hadn't been able to make it, so he had sent along a work experience lad called Gideon. The poor boy was clearly nervous, but in the end breeding and a damn good education showed through, and he was soon chatting comfortably with the grown-ups.

With GCSE's coming up in a few weeks, the boy had obviously been doing some revision on Economics, and he was able to tell us all some of what he had learned.

There was another gentlemen between these two, elderly and somewhat confused. Like the people you sometimes sit next to on the bus, he was under the impression that he alone had forseen the financial crisis, and that he had warned absolutely everybody repeatedly that it was coming, and that - had everyone done exactly as he suggested - we would all now be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

After a while, it turned out that he wasn't, as many had suspected,Yoda from Star Wars after all. No. He was Vince Cable, from a minority party called the LibDems.

Vince was very confident, as he realised he was in no danger of actually having fulfil any of the promises he made. So instead, he flung in a few jokes. The referee enjoyed the jokes so much, that he even let the audience laugh at them, and applaud, even though these things were supposed to be strictly forbidden.

Towards the end, the referee decided unilaterally that Vince was by far the most entertaining, and decided to direct the majority of questions to him, leaving the other two hopping anxiously from foot to foot, wishing it could be their turn to make a joke.

At the end of the debate, each of the candidates was required put on a sincere expression, look straight into the camera and trot out some utterly partisan bollocks. Which they duly did.

But what, you may be asking, did we learn about the UK economy? About the different parties' political philosphies, and how these informed a putative fiscal strategy? About the measures proposed to tackle the enormous deficit?

Well, fuck all, really.

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