And tremendous fun was had by all...

Last night I popped into the candidate's husting at the student union. It was the most fun I've had in years (but I'm a very sad person)... ok, it was mildly amusing.

This was partly down to the Socialist Worker's Party candidate's stand-in who managed to sound so much like a cliche of a Socialist Worker's Party candidate that myself and friends were unable to stop laughing. We were debating if he had a sheet in front of him with a ticklist of 'things I must somehow work into my responses regardless of topic or question in order to sound like a stereotype'... Arthur Scargill... CHECK... repeated railing against privatisation... CHECK... Margaret Thatcher... CHECK... Miner's strike... CHECK... Palestine... CHECK... 'The Rich'... CHECK... Anti-Trade Union Laws... CHECK... I don't think he managed to work in Karl Marx, revolution or solidarity but perhaps he squeezed all those things in after we left.

The second main point of humour was the Tory candidate's introduction in which he felt the need to give us his entire life story including where he went to university, where he practiced at the bar, what he studied, where he moved too... Everyone did this to some extent by way of introducing themselves, but he did this at such great length and in such immense detail that it invited wonderful parody along the lines of "And in 1973 I married Freda Smith, a charming lady whose father was from Crewe. We married in a small chapel near Plymouth and the vicar gave a very charming sermon on that day. It was Corinthian's III if I recall and then we sang "There is a green hill far away" as the sunlight streamed in through the window. Shortly afterwards, we had our first child - John David and we bought 3 gerbils called Fluffy, Frederick and Nibbles... and a dog called Ernest. Then, after I lost my seat we decided to move back to the South West and I began to practice at the Bar and worked in a small practice on Queens Road..." I believe he was trying to establish that he had local roots. However, given the audience, he would have been better off doing what our candidate did and making jokes about storming the stage or something.