Will Vince Cable have the last laugh?

“People watching this can end up depressed in many different ways,” Alistair Darling just said. No wonder Channel 4 didn’t ask him to write the trailer.

Interestingly given the rules for audience gagging have been relaxed for this debate in contrast with the Leaders’ Debates, the audience is not getting very animated. Maybe it is the reasonable low-key tone of the participants?

But where there has been laughter or support it seems to come for Vince Cable despite the fact that he is painting the bleakest view of the years ahead.

I mentioned on the programme tonight how the other parties get irritated by his homespun whimsey and compare him to “Chance” or Chauncey Gardner” in Peter Sellers’ film “Being There.”

The public don’t seem to share that view, a view reinforced by tonight’s Channel 4 News poll.