The election narrative has been 'changed' after 'that debate' - or so are all the media declaring unanimously. It's weirdly gratifying to see that the unpredictable dynamics of peer pressure are affecting the analyses of the two-clever-by-half Oxbridge graduates in charge of public opinion via the media as much as it is leading to the chav fashion of donning a Burberry Cap.
While gloating over the limited analytical skills of our opinion formers might briefly imbue the writer with the warm glow of the realisation that even very clever people are often not as clever as they think, it also throws up the same old disturbing questions about democracy and the media.

The 4rth Estate loves narrative. In fact, it loves narrative so much, that even when there is no discernible coherent narrative arch it feels compelled to create one. The fact is that audiences do react to story-telling, we all love a good yarn.

The recent tale of the plucky outsider, the heroic Nick Cleggy-come-lately who is playing the role of the plucky underdog, pitched against Bully Brown and Call-me-Dave, is ticking all the right boxes - a liberal David-Figure pitched against the twin Philistine champions of Labour and Tory, Goliath cleft in two.
What is strange in this case, is that the story has been created around the paraphernalia of presentation - true to the 'Zeitgeist' pervading much of the 20th and certainly the 21st century of the final triumph of form over content.
To compare poor Nick Clegg to Churchill on the grounds of a 90min televisual performance is beyond the ridiculous. The backlash is inevitable - and will be following the entirely predictable pattern of the media first building someone up only to tear them down 5 mins later.
Also, the conceit that Mr.Clegg is somehow distinct from the other party leaders - suggesting that he is not a politician like those others, who have fiddled their expenses and let us down on many of the issues we, the electorate, care about, was quite impossible to maintain in the long-term. Mr. Clegg is career politician, just like Brown and Cameron, in a previous incarnations he was a Brussels Eurocrat and policy wonk. Any claims that he has experienced life outside politics just do not not wash.

let the games commence

First election count down experience. Let the games commence.
Met Zac Goldsmith at the German Bakers.
'Hello! How are you today?'
to which I reply:
'Very Well. Thank you.'
And because I am polite, I add 'And you?'
'Well, thank you!'

Zac is accompanied by a little old Lady clutching a clip-board and is obviously out canvassing.
While I acknowledge the baker and briefly turn round, Zac has disappeared before I can ask him how the Tories will be able to reconcile their promises of 'definitely, definitely cutting the deficit, because that is the most important issue ever' with their freshly announced tax cuts.
I am clutching my rolls and when I leave the bakery I can see him across the road at someone's front door. I briefly consider following him, but decide against it, mainly because I don't want to seem like a mad old bat, and because sometime ago (when still a teenager) I decided I was never going to run after a man.
When I get back to the car, I retell my little brush with celebrity to my son, 12, who is unimpressed.
'Handsome Chap, though', I say.
'What's he look like?'
'Tall and Blond' goes I, to which the tart reply comes 'Like Boris Johnsson then'.