Were You Still Up For The Norks? (with apologies to Brian Cathcart)

It's three minutes before kick off on BBC1's latest searing drama on contemporary political engagement, and there is a stony silence chez Hamer. Mrs Shawcross is singularly unenthusiastic about entering into the spirit of The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, and my attempts to start a "Norkage Sweepstake", where we both bet on the minute between 9 and 10pm that the tasty daughter gets 'em out, is met with the shortest of shrifts. In the end, to shut me up, she bets on 9.18pm and I plump for 9.39pm.

One minute to go and the annoucer introduces us with, "John Humphreys feels the force of the amazing Mrs Pritchard". This augurs ill.

9pm: And we're off, and the first scene is set in Horrocks' husband's office. As the names of the characters are about as unmemorable as their personalities, I am going to have to name them myself, because I am blessed if I can remember what any of them are called. The husband will be henceforth known as Ian Beale because of a startling and unfortunate resemblence.

So, we start with a girl in his office explaining to him, in passionate detail, why invoking the Parliament Act in order to move the machinery of state to Bradford (I know, I know, but bear with me here) is not only constitutional but her democratic right, nay! duty.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that when I go out with my non-political friends, I always get the strong impression that all their water-cooler conversations are about the democratic advisability of statutory instruments, and the improvements to the legislative process made by putting more Bills out to consultation.

9.02pm: The Home Secretary, now known as Rebekah Wade, declares that "The British public are all in love with [the idea of moving Parliament to Bradford]! Unless they live in London". This of course, is the crux of the BBC's argument here. Simultaneously fancying themselves as in touch with what "poor" people are like oop there and never having been north of Watford Gap service station, they have served us up this north vs south bullshit which is, like, soooo pre-1997 as any fule kno.

9.07pm: Ooh, a new character with floppy hair, designer glasses, an endearing stammer, and an Oxbridge education: of course I am going to name him Jeremy. And if I'd known at 24 that all I had to do to get a job with the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to get all shy and stutter inaudibly about VAT, I wouldn't have worried so much about embarrassing myself at the Fabian summer parties.

9.15pm: The daughter (GirlsAloud) has been offered a couple of thousand pose nekkid for a magazine she describes to her mother as a "wank rag". She elucidates futher by the famous hand movement to provide further illustration, lest we began to question why this tedious shite is on after the watershed as opposed to after Newsround.

At this stage it's worth noting the Parliament scenes are not filmed in Manchester Town Hall where political dramas are usually staged. Instead, the walking-around-talking-scenes (someone's a "West Wing" fan), appear to be filmed in a 1960s office block with tasteful brown and beige interior. Did the BBC's budget not stretch to the Town Hall? Or, after all the bullshit about northerners being the salt of the earth, did the Beeb confess that they were too scared to venture beyond Birmingham because they'd heard there were dragons and the local residents ate babies? I think the license payer should be told.

9.18pm: Mrs Shawcross has lost the bet! Eighteen minutes in and no bosoms yet. My initial whoop of triumph is stifled by a fish like glare from my beloved which shuts me up immediately.

9.20pm: It would appear that Jeremy's shagged the Chancellor. Well, who wouldn't eh? But it seems that Jeremy's [gasp] engaged! What a cad! Also we learn that Jeremy's surname is Sixsmith. Hmmm, a naive and idealistic chap screwed by the ambitious and selfish upper-echelons of the political classes? What could the BBC be getting at?

9.25pm: GirlsAloud has got a job in a clarsy bar (in which one of her fellow workers has sown the seeds of porn in her mind by yelling "I'd sell my firstborn for £20k!" periodically) and as she tells her mother, "you can't get rich on £6.50 an hour!". Absolutely not, as the producers know from their own experiences. Why, there are all the sons and daughters of BBC executives, living at home with no overheads who have to work for the paltry sum of £6.50 an hour when petrol costs the amount it does! Christ, how can Arabella run a Lexus and afford ethically sourced coke on that derisory slave-wage without resorting to glamour modelling? Hang your head in shame, Tony Blair!

9.28: Lots of striding around the White City basement it was filmed in reading aloud from the recently released biography on Horrocks containing - amongst boring political commentary - the news that Mr and Mrs Horrocks don't do The Sex any more. Ian Beale: sad. Horrocks: wants to know who has leaked the jaw-dropping fact that she's a bit crap at this politics business. She sets her rather fruity advisor (Jo Moore) on the case to find out. This she does by approaching every Cabinet Minister and Minister of State and asking, "scuse me? Did you say that Horrocks was shite at being PM? You didn't? Fanx anyway!".

This kind of in-depth knowledge of the criminal mind should not be wasted. We suggest a letter to the Home Secretary forthwith to put this policy suggestion into practice with regard to the interrogation of terror suspects. At the very least it will please the Liberal Democrats.

9.35: NORKS AHOY! It would appear that GirlsAloud sought to prove that she was A Strong Woman Who Knows Her Own Mind (copyright, Nikki, 23, from Stoke) by being photographed in the buff.

Her picture was then broadcast onto the House of Commons a la Gail Porter. GirlsAloud is tearful, and genuinely confused as to why the photographer who knew she was the PMs daughter would want to photograph her naked and then use it to embarrass her mum. Horrocks: mad.

Hurrah for feminism!

9,38pm: Horrocks is off to have breakfast with an African president. Obviously, this character had caused the writers some consternation:

Writer 1: We need an African chap to give it a bit of a multicultural feel, Larry.
Writer 2: Pip, pip! Not many of those dark chaps around my end of Notting Hill, Bernard old sort. I tell you what, that chap we read at Eton who wrote a lot about johnny foreigner, you know?
Writer 1: Rudyard Kipling?
Writer 2: No, H. Rider Haggard. Let's crib something straight out of "She".

And, lo! it came to pass that possibly the most ridiculous character of this piss-poor series was introduced. Dressed in colonial garb presumably borrowed out of the wardrobe department of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, he proceeds to give Horrocks a speech about how her country needs her to be strong through these difficult times. It seems that African President Chap oversaw a revolution where power was handed from the elite down to the ordinary people. See what the Beeb are trying to do by way of comparison? Clever isn't it?

[I think Mrs Shawcross is beginning to weep in despair]

9.40am: And John Humphreys is on to do his interview with Horrocks. As usual, Humphreys asks the same searching questions of Horrocks as he does to the likes of Blair and Cameron, such as "do you like jam?" and "you're much nicer than your predecessor, Horrocks." Of course Humphreys is, at all times, polite and never shouts over her or tries to force her into a corner in order to score a point.

On the offchance that any MPs are reading this, I think you should take this message to heart: in order to do well on a Today interview you have to be a northern novice who wants to move Parliament to Bradford and whose daughter regularly delights the masses by appearing naked and larger than life over the Terrace. With these sensible approaches and common sense policies, you'll be guaranteed an easy, respectful ride and it's not Humphreys fault that you haven't the same courage as Horrocks and choose not to do so.

9.42pm: It appears that the Presidents kids have been shot to death by a gun-man because some objected to "the democratic and legal rights [he extended] to a lot of people". Are you seeing the parallels yet between him and Horrocks? Are you?

Mind you, this sort of thing happens every day. You're a Prime Minister getting a sycophantic ride from Humpers one minute, and having to tell an implausible African President that his kids are dead the next. The difference between Horrocks and Blair is that when he did that sort of thing HE LAUGHED.

9.48: GirlsAloud's got a place at University. Proof, if e'er more was needed that standards are slipping.

9.52: Horrocks is addressing the House of Commons on her decision to make "central government less remote, and local gove more accountable to the people" for the first time. This, of course, is achievable all by one Act; it was mere selfishness on the part of previous Labour and Conservative administrations that they did not invoke this Magic Act before.

9.53pm: Christ, I am losing the will to live. Mrs Shawcross has buried her head in her hands and is rocking back and forward moaning "make it stop! Make it stop!"

9.54pm: Jeremy's going to shag the Chancellor again...oh here we go!

9.58pm: Some nonsense about Ian Beale laundering money. No, by this stage, I didn't care either.

And...that's it.

Can I just say that out of all the political dramas the BBC has ever done, this is the worst. That the Corporation that produced the brilliant House of Cards has sunk to this simplistic bullshit is a disgrace.

The programme deploys a cynical naivete to explain by implication why all politicians are bad, and if only "the people" had more of a voice, everything would be okay. But Mrs Shawcross saved the most damning statement for later that evening:

"It's worse than The Project".