Glorious leader appears on TV

QUENTIN LETTS watches the PM's fightback on TV

We had a lot of hand movements. He might, I think, have been doing some cat's cradle games with his family of late. His hands certainly seemed to be doing that sort of thing in front of the camera yesterday morning. It was like watching a man doing charades, trying to convey the idea of changing a car's headlights. Or maybe fiddling with an old TV set's horizontal control knobs.

He then started doing synchronised pointing, both forefingers stabbing the air. Toro! Ole! I think it was intended to make him look assertive; Gordon the man of action. It worked pretty well. From time to time his left eyebrow went walkabout but otherwise this was a more convincingly statesmanlike premier than we saw in that awful YouTube film.

'To be honest, what I've seen offends my Presbyterian conscience,' he said, talking about the MPs' expenses fiddles. He returned to this theme, talking about how he had been brought up in a family where 'integrity and telling the truth was what mattered'. Those who have longed for Mr Brown to show the electorate more of his 'back story' will be pleased by this development. Others might worry that the voters will look at the way he has squandered so many billions of pounds of our money in the past year and think, 'so how come THAT didn't offend your Presbyterian conscience, chum?'