TONIGHT will be exactly a year since we reluctantly suspended our scepticism and let the three stooges flutter their eyelashes at us during the first televised election debate.

Barely 90 minutes later Cleggmania was in full spate, leaving Dave and the Clunking Fist blinking in the stagelights and cursing whoever told them they had the X Factor. And within weeks Nick and Dave were skipping hand in hand through the daisies, Gbagbo Brown was holed up in his hideout refusing to leave and the electors were convinced they'd voted for one thing, confused at being told they hadn't and left wondering exactly who was in charge.

But oh dear, had we only known those early days of Ivorian turmoil were about as good as it was going to get. In that first debate, breathlessly using phrases like "billions and squillions of pounds", old Nick challenged Dave to explain how he could cut the deficit, create a "blizzard of tax breaks" and still find loadsamoney for the NHS. Presumably he now has his answer.

We're still some weeks short of the Coalition Government's first anniversary but Dave's already becoming distracted and following the example of his hero Tony Blair, and many other leaders though history, by leaving home fires burning and heading for foreign parts as far away as possible, as often as possible.

Limpalong Lansley was abandoned to explain to a jeering Commons mob how his NHS reform duck had suddenly, and without warning, gone lame. Dave, meanwhile, was materialising in Pakistan, again making like Blair with humbug apologies for Imperial cock-ups that had nothing to do with him, and handing £600m for education to a nation capable of building itself a submarine fleet to make ours look as sophisticated as a Littlehampton paddle steamer. What The Chronicle's friends at Brookfields would be able to do with just a fraction of that £600m, eh? And then it's 'stop all engines' on the most naïve, crass and unworldly defence review ever devised outside of a CND comedy fundraiser, and Dave and Sharon are waiting glumly at the airport and looking as fed up as any other well-heeled couple booked on no-frills Ryanair because it seemed like a good idea at the time; en route for a Spanish resort apparently handpicked for its dullness..

Meanwhile, the two Eds, glottals stopping like Libyan anti-aircraft fire, think they'll fool us into believing they're better than one; hoping we've forgotten that a year ago they were still telling us, publicly at least, that their man Gbagbo was the only one.