All right, a show of hands for this one, all the candidates please, a quick question, am I bovvered?

Gentle Readers will not be surprised to learn that Your Humble Blogger was, in his misspent youth, one of those teenagers who could (and did) recite entire Monty Python sketches, heck, entire episodes of Flying Circus from memory. Sad but true. I no longer bore innocent passers-by with great swaths of Pytext, and I suspect that any attempt to recite the complete text of even a short and familiar sketch would be comical mostly in its failure, but disembodied lines float through my mind (or what passes for my mind) at odd moments. A nearly relevant quote for every circumstance, only unlike Guernsey Halvah, they aren’t uplifting, poignant or even meaningful.

So. I was reading a book about pre-war British politics, and my unruly mind threw at me the voice of one of the Pythons saying “I think I’d pay some Dutchman to set fire to Lord Snowden.” I can’t remember which one, which means it was probably Michael Palin. I’m pretty sure the previous panelist was Graham Chapman (“Speaking personally, I’d annex the Sudetenland”), and the caller, very likely Eric Idle, had asked the panel what changes they would make if they were Hitler. I’ve wondered if one of the panelists they were mocking was my guy Harold Nicolson, who turns up in this book, but what has really been nagging me is the important question of whether our own Presidential debates would be improved if the questions were asked by a panel of characters from British sketch comedy.

It’s not just that I would like to know what changes Mike Huckabee would make if he were Hitler (answer: ban abortion). I’m imagining the League of Gentlemen job-seeker character asking John Edwards if he could spell the word “job”. I’m seeing Derek or Clive asking Mitt Romney about the worst job he’s ever had. I’m thinking about Ali G asking Hillary Clinton if she’s ever met anyone really famous. Maybe Eric Morecambe would call John McCain “Ann McCrumb”. And Jennifer Saunders would… I have no idea what Jennifer Saunders would do. But it’s worth finding out, isn’t it?

And, surely, how can we, as American citizens, make an informed and deliberate choice in the most important election in the history of time without knowing how our President would respond to non sequitors, abuse and ribaldry?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.