Gordon Brown goes digital (update)

Further to my post and others about Gordon Brown on YouTube appealing for questions, the dead tree media have picked up on the story. The Times have a sketch article by Ann Treneman that makes some nice points:

"Gordon Brown has launched something called “Ask the PM” on YouTube. His appeal for questions lasts only 40 seconds and yet each of those seconds seems a second too long. I suppose that it is so bad that it might almost be good. But the problem is that YouTube already has some great Gordo clips such as the all-time classic “Gordon Brown Picking His Nose”. This may be tasteless (though not to Gordon, apparently) but it's riveting.

Not so “Ask the PM”. The only question I had for Gordon after watching it was: “Why?”

...

The truth is that the whole “Ask the PM” venture is confusing, if not for Gordo then certainly for us (at the time of writing, it has had 13,230 hits compared with 249,839 for Gordon Picking His Nose).

...

Why, for instance, is our Prime Minister sitting in what appears to be the spare room? After all, he lives in Downing Street and so, we must assume, could have his pick of backdrops: sweeping staircases, cosy fireplaces, etc. But instead Gordon is plopped between a printer and a fridge that has (gasp) bottled water. Bottled water? I'm sorry but that is so uncool it's tropical.

The camera wobbles (why? a tribute to cinéma vérité?) as Gordon burbles on about his “new exciting new initiative”. “I will be here to answer your questions, questions you have about how globalisation is working.”

Gordon must have written this “script” himself. No one else would think that the question on everyone's lips would be: “How is globalisation working?” There may be a few other topics (financial meltdown, his odd smile, the polls) that intrude."

Gordon, I think you have been rumbled, the tide has turned you are now officially a "laughing stock", as I first documented last November when I blogged:

"Bad news Gordon but tonight when Graham Norton made a joke about you and the audience laughed approvingly it struck me - you are now officially a figure of fun!

The joke was about a picture of you and your wife looking glum at the Queen and Prince Phillip's 60th anniversary service.

"What happened to him?

Did he get his dream job and discover he's shit at it"

That and a gag about the missing data disks, and a piss take of Alistair Darling

-hello Darling, ... Darling, "you're a fucking idiot Darling, you're sacked"

Hatred is bearable for a government, Mrs Thatcher thrived on it. What kills a government is derision, it killed Major's government and it will kill Gordon Brown's. Trust me it will get worse, Graham Norton today, Jonathan Ross tomorrow and it will spread.

NotaSheep are you enjoying Gordon Brown's embarrassment? Oh yes I am, schadenfreude is a wonderful feeling."