Well last time we ventured into the murky world of the forthcoming UK General Election, the final remark was as follows; For now, all I know is an election is coming (like Winter) and it’s going to be important and depressing at the same time. And finally after the first TV / internet session with the two main candidates of David Cameron and Ed Miliband, you might actually find it really is fitting in with that theme.

The first of four sessions with those fighting for power, 5 years in a lovely house called Number 10 which has a sort of functional kitchen and the expense accounts that go with everything else took place last Thursday, where the collaboration between Sky News, Channel 4 and indeed the all powerful YouTube came to pass.

Here though, we wouldn’t see the two potential leaders fight it out with each other but with someone thought long gone from making people cry; PAXMAN, the greatest super jorno-hero of them all. So what did we learn, and was there a glimmer of hope that we weren’t going to just have to ignore the people in power again for 5 years?

Well, only when they didn’t take something else away from us of course….

A mass debate.

So to set the scene inside the brightly lit up building the broadcasters clearly spent too much money getting done, there was an audience filled with lovely people who put on their best clothes as they were going to be on the telly, and of course we had the two presenters in the room, Jeremy Paxman and Kate Burley who it seems, forgot to wake up during the whole affair and who instead relied on her body’s auto pilot function to get through everything. Let’s examine what facts came out of this which may be relevant to our decision making come May;

David Cameron, for starters, admitted he couldn’t live on a zero hours contract which became very popular with those companies which didn’t want to spend money on their staff, as during his lovely interview session with the one they call “Paxman”, the current Prime Minister / Captain of the Coalition said: “No I could not live on one of those.” Well come May, you may be forced to go to work at Sports Direct me hearty….

He wanted to ensure that everyone had a say on Europe. Though surely that will be despite the fact that when it comes to a vote on the EU, no-one’s truly going to have a clue of what we get / lose? Food bank use by the poor, he conceded had also risen, but apparently that’s because Job Centres were not allowed to tell people they existed before (curious in itself too).

Do you think I look pretty with this tie?

Oh and that pesky government debt thing always seems to come up too….did we actually borrow more now even when services had been cut back and VAT was raised? £500 billion seems quite a lot, even with my bad maths.

Ed Millipede, the ever hopeful, was basically hounded about what happened ages ago with his brother when they both went for the Labour leadership and of course, Ed won. Ed stated that his brother could not have led the Labour party better than him but admitted the battle for leadership had left him “bruised” and the relationship “strained”.

How this is relevant to to what’s going on is anyone’s guess, but this was brought up a few more times later, with PAXMAN also wanting to crush his spirit and then ask if he was alright afterwards.

But of course it wouldn’t stop there, with questions about Ed’s time with the previous Labour government coming up for destruction by the mighty Paxman, who pretty much got a concede on things where they went wrong in terms of spending and borrowing money, like the Dome in North Greenwich, which has successfully gone on to become the O2, to the levels of immigration.

I can make other hand puppet shadows too….

So to the rest of the production and of course what else happened. As well facing EL PAXMAN MACHO, the two leaders would also face a round of questioning from the audience, who as you would expect would try and cover all areas to ensure that the broadcasters couldn’t be accused of being biased. Basically this is the part where both leaders could come into their own with the practised speeches.

But here it’s best to just highlight some of those questions which were….questionable.

For Cameron, it was What do you think are Ed Miliband’s Best qualities? Unless this was a way to see if they were human, not sure of the relevance. But for Ed, there were plenty more besides the same question of best qualities; You seem gloomy, are things really that bad? Would David Miliband have done a better job as Labour Leader? I must confess, I was rather lost as where these had come from, and the whole brother thing seemed pointless to bring up.

Through the audience component, the automated Kay Burley seemed to want to interrupt Millipede more about various points. which seemed to give away a little bias towards Captain Cameron methinks. In fact, I wasn’t sure, but at one point at the end when Cameron’s bit was over with, it appeared she wanted to jump over to him and kiss. Ooooh, a will they / won’t they…nice! Even the added question of eating Shredded Wheat by Burley was weird, so one has to wonder if her body needed food and this was how she expressed it.

Now if you brush your teeth and go to bed, I promise to read you a lovely bedtime news story….

For all the praise of PAXMAN (greatest jorno-hero of them all) by the media, including a piece over at the Guardian, where if there was a vote, it would have been for Paxman by a landslide, there was one aspect which was troubling.

He gave both Captain Cameron and Millipede a much deserved roasting on their records and previous governments, but it appeared to be slightly more personal when it came to Ed Millipede, with the questioning about his brother and of course the slightly tactless checking if he was alright of course.

But perhaps this was the guy being a bit rusty after buggering off from Newsnight, and perhaps if he was back on destroying more politicians like the good old days which then had a knock-on effect, we’d see a bit more progress on the political stage.

And for what this programme did, aside from start to cast aside all that crap about the leader’s debates taking place to begin with (shouldn’t have been news), was also to miss the opportunity to get both leader’s at each other proper for a period of time. Again, whether or not this was done to the silliness in the background to the TV debates, one couldn’t say.

The next few shows will provide a platform for more parties and therefore we’re going to get lost in a sea of noise. A week can be a very long time in politics and regretfully, any headway made by either party which most likely have the keys to Number 10 will also be lost now. It’s still also not overly clear as who we all would be best with. Think it’s time to stay in bed again for a bit.

For those of you who may wish to discuss what went down in funky-town, you can of course relive the horror over and over again thanks of course, to YouTube;

Explosion used in the main banner image to make this far more exciting than it really is, is thanks to Billie Ward on flickr; https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwward0/15134164915/