Collars and Cuffs

You know I tried as hard as I could, but as Alistair Darling steamrollered through this years incomprehensible budget I just couldn't take my eyes off his snowy white hair and his two jet black eyebrows.

Try as I might to absorb the contents of his speech, unravel the complexities of his presentation, I just couldn't help wondering which of the two elements was real and which was dyed.

Both look pretty realistic, and yet something tells us that this can't be. One of these hairy features is fake. Does this tell us anything about our Chancellor of the Exchequer?

I don't know, but maybe the theory is that if enough people are concentrating on his thatch then they will be too preoccupied to listen to the detail. Just maybe Gordon Brown is not losing the plot. Alistair Campbell replaced by Vidal Sassoon. Spin Doctors replaced by Stylists. We will all be too mesmerised to worry about the detail.

Jacqui Smith in Vivienne Westwood. Harriet Harman in Gaultier.

The budget itself was a study in "Neroism". With the Northern Rock debacle still fresh in our memories, the American banking system in disarray, the worlds credit markets frozen solid and a general sense of foreboding in the air, Darling stepped up to the dispatch box with a series of daring and dramatic proposals to help bail us out from this predicament.

4p on a pint of beer.

3p on a litre of cider.

Did I hear correctly? Could he possibly have been this decisive in the face of world collapse?

I don't know. I just couldn't take my eyes off those eyebrows.....