They really, really, really want to zig-a-zig-ah!
But they ain't. What a booooring Question Time: Ming, Yvette Cooper, Michael Howard, and Piers Morgan.

The reformation of the Spice Girls is headlining when I arrive in; apparently nothing much else has happened today. The 24 hour news in all its glory.

Before we get onto the Business of the (Shawcross) House may I issue this public service announcement: next week is the interminable "yoof" Question Time edition when Dimbers' annual attempts to get down wiv da kidz brings tears of horror to the eyes of the most hardened viewer. Avoid like the plague.

This week, however, the panel is pretty sparse comprising as it does merely Yvette Cooper (pictured), Piers "It Happened Honest!" Morgan, Mephistopheles, and some bloke who's clearly having trouble with his contact lenses.

This augurs ill, and indeed our worst fears are realised with Dimbers in his patented oh-gosh-I'm-a-national-institution manner attempts to set the narrative. Brown is, apparently, responsible for everything that took place over the last ten years. Got that? Everything. Funny really, because a month ago everyone was arguing that he was a deposed prince in the Tower and now he's the Svengali to Tony Blair's bosomy and helpless Trilby. Whatever.

Oh, and Piers shouts a lot. Loudly and often irrelevantly, presumably in the hope that one of the verbal bullets he's aiming at Blair will hit the target and he will get that, the most coveted acclamations: a round of applause from an a QT audience. The fact that he is unsuccessful in this endeavour (even with an audience that applauded later in the show when all the ills of the Middle East were laid at the feet of dem eeeevil "Israelis") makes me extremely glad he's never asked me to go on a shooting party with him. Like as not, I'd end up with a couple of rounds of misdirected "friendly fire" in the bollocks.

I arrive back from a call of nature to hear a woman from the audience calling for the highly original policy initiative of "troops out". After over four years of this statement recurring every week, even Dimbers is finding it hard to produce a the required look of shocked enlightenment at this predictable weekly advice.

Ming Campbell attempts to address her points: "according to SI 1806/3432...remember it well...legitimate questions...sub-committee on...Government made an announcement in March... and then re-issued it in October but made use of the genitive case with relation to clause 3..."

Audience have no bloody idea what he's on about (and I went for a refill halfway through as well, so mea culpa if I've misunderstood the finer points), but he mustered some half-hearted applause on the basis that he probably said something nasty about the Government. Go Ming! Yeah!

A pair of eyebrows asks when the Government are going to listen to The People(TM). Trying to address the "thoughts" of a man who assumes that because he has an opinion then, necessarily, he's representative of the entirety of The People(TM) is an arrogance to which I can only respond (in the co-opted words of Trilby), "am I bovvered?"

An audience member actually asks a genuine question about Brown's "Cabinet of all the talents", the Liberal's lack of enthusiasm to participate therein, and what did the panel think was Brown's motivation? This approach is ignored by Dimbers: "sorry, sir, that was a genuine question and I can only assume you are requiring an intelligent answer that doesn't deviate into piss-poor attempts at political point scoring. I'm sorry, I can't accept that."

The question is duly rephrased in a far more belligerent manner.

Ming immediately rises to the bait and starts channelling Ian Paisley: the LibDems say NO! This is a policy position which I find somewhat baffling given that they are the only party committed to coalitian governance but are unwilling to form a coalition with any party in Scotland, Wales and, now England. Nevertheless, Ming is determined to win us over with his rhetoric. Over to you, Ming!

Ming: "....inter-party relationship....inapppropriate...Liberal Democrats not doing anything that might involve them being subsequently held to account...Liberty...CCTVs...knickers...er...where was I?"

Yvette asks him a pertinent question relating to where he feels the interests of the country features in his analysis. For a few seconds Ming sounds like he's strangling a cat in his throat and then simply roars the word "ELECTION!"

[Wild applause and honking from the audience]

To be fair, there was an interesting conversation at one point between Ming and Howard which I could have listened to for far longer. Dimbers, however, has other ideas.

Next up is an angry woman who reckons, "right, that like it's BAD not to have viable opposition parties and this is the Liberal Democrats' fault for not being viable. That's why, like, I don't get involved in politics and try and change things, y'know? They're all the same, and I have hair which clearly requires a lot of work so I don't bother engaging so I let other people get on with it but they, like, DON'T y'know? Everyone's selfish apart from me. I'd do it so much better if I wanted to, but I can't be bothered, y'know?"

[More applause]

Howard is asked a question on the recent Tory U-turn on grammar school policy. He chooses to respond to it in the time honoured way:

- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill Clinton)
- "I did not say that the Government should apologise over Iraq" (Harriet Harman)
- "I did not say that Cameron was talking bollocks over grammar schools, and he absolutely hasn't changed his mind on the issue" (Michael Howard)

Ming then weighs in with his recollection of the debate over the The Housing Renewal Grants (Prescribed Form and Particulars) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 1999. Or something.

[Audience still don't understand - and neither do I - but they applaud anyway. He's being horrible about Labour. Probably]

An audience member (who the uncharitable might refer to as "Casper the Ghost") asks a hi-lar-i-ous question about whether the Tories should rename themelves and, if so, what the panel felt they should be called?

Jesus wept.

I could feel my will to live slowly draining away so left the room at this point; there is nothing worse than the attempted comedy stylings of politicians and journalists (may the Lord protect me from both). We resume as the subject of the recent rain-storm in the north is raised, a natural disaster in which Piers sees the hand of divine retribution casting His judgement over the legacy of Blair.

By the way, there is nothing on God's earth that would make me dislike Brown other than to hear Piers Morgan praise him; similarly there is nothing that warms me to Blair so much as to witness Yvette Cooper's distinctly uncharitable refusal to acknowledge that the Tonester wasn't the absolute incarnation of all evil.

Damn, that was dull. So, for whoever doesn't want to watch a bunch of Jeremys and Clarissas adding the description "freelance TV maestro" to their Oxbridge application forms next week: Sports at seven?