The Sketch: Boris socks it to his rival, but don't cry for either of them
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Your support makes all the difference.And Livingstone wept. When filmed watching his campaign commercials – young people saying how they needed a mayor like him – he cried such tears that they had to be knuckled away with both fists. So skilled an operator is he that he can cry out of one eye at a time so it's obviously serious in Camp Livingstone.
The three main candidates were introduced to cheers and amused booing. Some mooing. We had heckling, yelling, laughter, talented abuse, clever needling and just the right amount of quiet listening.
"He's not telling the truth, he knows he's not telling the truth." Who said that? They all did, at one point. Ringmaster Clive Anderson summed up two claims with the words, "I don't know who to trust." There was, according to Ken, Boris's disastrous record on crime, transport, environment, investment. There was according to Boris Ken's relentless mendacity.
Boris was earnest, serious, and a little bit boring, as a man with a "nine-point plan" will always be. Ken went so far as to challenge Clive Anderson to a press-up competition. That's not quite wise for a winning candidate. But by the audience reaction Ken isn't getting back into the mayoralty.
A number of good ideas. Brian Paddick is going to offer a one-hour bus pass and take senior policemen's perks away (will he stop drawing his £64,000 police pension we're paying him?). Ken is going to get wholesale energy prices for domestic users.
Ken's best lines were all about Boris; his biggest applause was quoting the Mayor declining to come back to London "because it would be rewarding the rioters". The best lines about Ken came from our compère, who pressed him pleasantly but with fearsome clarity about his tax affairs. It was the issue that ignited the hall. Growling, rumbling, mob-like muttering, exclamations of wide-spectrum disgust.
The recurrent question that most excited the audience was: "But how will he pay for it?" For Ken, it may be selling phials of lachryma Livingstone outside City Hall.
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