Marmite man himself, Gordon Brown

So, 25 hours to go until polling time.

25 hours. 25 hours until we find out whether more people read tabloids or broadsheets. That is, afterall, what an election is about. 4 weeks of gaffes and political broadcasts to help newspaper owners decide which party to tell us inky-fingered print readers which party we’re going to vote for. The election isn’t decided on sofas, or in front of television debates, but by ragged journalists typing away all day for a paycheck from some media tycoon.

But just in case you’re thinking or excercising your democratic right of free-thinking, you have a choice to make.

Firstly there’s marmite man himself Gordon Brown. I don’t mean you either love him or hate him, I think every poll has made it clear that’s a one-sided thing, I just suspect he has a penchant for the brown sticky stuff. Biggotgate proved that. He rules with an economic fist of steel and a statesmanlike quality straight from the 1950’s. Approximately the same period as his hairstyle. He inhales mid-sentence like a premiership footballer buying time as he thumbs through The Penguin book of English Cliches: Spanish to English version. But it just shows a good old fashioned reliance on learning your lines.

The thing is, as each day of the election campaign has gone by with yet another disaster for Gordon, he’s started looking more and more like the shaggy-haired elderly homeless dogs they put at the end of the RSPCA adverts. You know, the one that gets overlooked for the younger dogs and will have to be put down if no one takes him in soon. It means you get the feeling that he’s a real person, and biggotgate just went to prove my suspicions that he must go home each day and remark that he’s surrounded by baffoons.

Yes he makes mistakes when he’s talking, but he has a strange uneasiness around cameras. Just look at him interacting with members of the public – he recently asked a child how old he was and responded with ‘that must be a nice age’. Bill Gates was no great public speaker, but he did a good job, and very few of the great inventors ot scientists were huge social animals. I don’t mind a Prime Minister not having a motormouth, so long as the brain is ticking-over nicely and he gets the job done.

There’s something rather grey about David Cameron if you ask me. Not in his photos obviously, as here he tends to go with a dark green and brown combo –  page 6 on the Dulux chart if you’re interested. I suspect if he wins tomorrow he’ll be outside Number 10 on Friday peeling off the fake skin on his face to reveal his Cyborg inner workings and asking if anyone knows where Sarah Connor lives. He’s a little too much like the office suck-up: Always at the front of the picture when things are going well, but his Teflon make-up means nothing sticks to him when something goes wrong. Everytime I see him on the telly I have an urge to punch him hard in the middle of his chubby little face, but I suspect I’d break my hand on the silver spoon he has inside his mouth.

Then you have Nick Clegg, currently with the Liberal Democrats as part of his school’s work placement scheme. I think he’s there because his elderly uncle, seen alongside him at all times, works there: Vince Cable I think his name is. We all know he’s posh, but I couldn’t help wondering if he was so surprised to end up on the telly debates with the two grown-ups that he’d had to send a runner out to TopMan to buy him a suit and tie.

I found a curious way of deciding between them today: I imagined them as double glazing salesman trying to sell to an elderly lady – I think it was something to do with them standing around in their various suits. Nick would knock on the door, tell her about the windows and their benefits at great length, but when he’d gone she’d forget what company he worked for or how much it was going to cost. Gordon would come round, and she’d invite him in for coffee – I think she’d see him much like the elderly dogs on RSPCA adverts too. 3 hours later, they’d have exchanged life histories, become friends on Facebook, and would be sending each other Christmas cards, but he’d have forgotten entirely to tell her about the windows. David Cameron would be the one to do the hard-sell. He’d have the elderly lady paying to re-glaze half the street, and he’d get her to put 50p in the meter to pay for the parking on his BWM outside whilst he fills in the paperwork. And when the daughter phones later to complain, he’d deny any responsibility. But he’d ask her if she knows the whereabouts of Sarah Connor, before hinting that he’ll be back.

25 hours.

25 hours to change the shape of Britain for the next 5 years. Or at least prove that James Murdoch and the various newspaper editors of this country aren’t in charge, and give Simon Cowell a bit of a bloody nose as a bonus.