By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
I was brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne and watching pub fights escalate was a common occurrence. Surprisingly the two leaders reminded me of one of these skirmishes, albeit it in an Oxbridge, educated duel way, rather than a bottling on Shields Road, Byker.
After watching a number of these confrontations, the violence tends to only escalate once the door staff have broken it up, then both parties can really throw insults at each other, knowing a fight is unlikely to take place.
On the subject of the TV debates, the two members (yes it is a double entendre) rolled out into the pub car park.
“You are scared of the Greens and my Uncle Ray”, the PM shouted under the doorman’s headlock.
“I will debate with anyone, any, time EVER,” Miliband responded, as another of the security team had him pinned on the floor.
“You are playing chicken with the Greens,” the PM taunted, as he picked his broken spectacles from the floor.
“I’ll take on all comers,” Miliband postured back, chest puffed out, as he tried to re-button his ripped shirt.
“No, you’re running scared,” the PM said, as he kicked the bus stop window through.
Apart from the fictional uncle Ray, that was the verbal exchange today. Part of me wanted to see them air dropped into the middle of a ruckus, in a provincial town on a Saturday night. Part of most of us probably.
Full of Shite Club would be the name of the feature film and next year’s Razzie award winner.
Anyway, as these two alpha males threw haymakers in the street, the unfancied Greens and UKIP slipped into the bar to chat up the leaders’ despondent wives.
Cameron and Miliband are both going to look very sheepish, when they take up their spaces on the TV debate stage, both battered and bruised. They have both lost the fight already, before it has even begun.
Leaving the bar room brawl, Cameron said that he wanted to ban encrypted messaging (What’s app, iMessage etc) On this I agree with the PM, but only so I don’t have to read the constant stream of messages, from my mates trying to arrange a place to meet on Saturday night. I guess I could just leave the group, so my selfish needs aside, it is a ridiculous idea. It is similar to the PM’s attempts to ban certain types of pornography: totally unworkable. Ironically a lot of that extreme porn is shared via these messaging services…so I am told.
The PM did say something (accidently) amusing today though. Labour had said “diddly squat” about the £30bn cuts both parties had voted for, which was so twee, I spat out my tea.
As the session ended Toby Perkins, Lab, mentioned that ambulance pressure has meant they had to downgrade calls. “Can you send an ambulance? I think I can see two party leaders about to kill each other outside Yates wine bar. “It’s not a priority luv; they’ll never hit each other”.
Sycophantic question of the day
James Morris, Con, who told the PM he had got a woman called Chloe a job. Shades of Miliband’s IT worker Gareth he met on Hampstead Heath.
Winner
No one – “You’re both barred”.