Memory man won't be remembered

I sat through a fair bit of Diddy David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party Conference yesterday afternoon.

It was a strange affair.

He'd memorised an hour's worth of material and delivered without autocue, but made a deliberate point of telling us at the outset that this is what he intended to do. Forget Iain Duncan-Smith's "Quiet Man". Here was the Memory Man in action. I half expected him to recite the telephone number of each member of the audience.

Trouble is, Dave, people don't actually care that you can remember your lines. They just look at you and think you won't be a patch on Gordon Brown if we find ourselves in a spot of bother. Like floods. Or terror attacks. Or Foot and Mouth. Or Bluetongue. Or runs on banks.

One nice touch in the speech was a reference to facebook, which signalled the toff from Notting Hill to be an ubercool man of the people. Dave claimed to have found a group on the social networking site that celebrated his "hottie" status. This is further evidence that facebook must be banned from all workplaces at the earliest possible opportunity, as it's clearly having a detrimental effect on people's brains.

Gordon Brown didn't mention facebook in his speech to the Labour Party Conference. But I guess people who are actually credible as Prime Ministers probably don't spend too much time poking their mates and writing on other people's walls.