If you given even a passing glance at the British media over the last couple of days, you’ll have seen that Mr Gordon Brown, incumbent but probably soon to be erstwhile PM, made something of a gaffe when in the privacy of his own car, not realising that his mike was still live, he made comments that were ever so slightly disparaging of an old biddy who had buttonholed him in the street some minutes before.

Such is the circus into which the unwavering eye of the media has turned politics that even people like Brown, who have other things to think about instead of trying to look pretty, have to smile (grimace) when their time is wasted by smugly righteous voters who think that their take on the world (for world, read grimy street somewhere) is the be-all and end-all of political agendas.

Before the defenders of the right to have an opinion jump in to upbraid me and tell me that Brown admitted that whatever her name was wasn’t, actually, being bigoted and that, in fact, she was the very essence of nice old lady, I’d ask you to watch her talking to Brown and then the aftermath in one go, in real time, and without the benefit of action replays.

Then tell me that she doesn’t come across as your typical died-in-the-wool conservative (small ‘c’, she’s actually typical Old Labour, of which we have many here) Northener who thinks that Southerners are inferior, much less people from – Heaven forfend – Europe, where they eat all that mucky food and don’t speak proper.

Brown had to backtrack as a damage limitation exercise, nothing more, the low-brow media such as Sky News and their ilk having latched onto the silly episode with such gusto. Anyone with half a brain would have just dismissed the whole thing as a harried politician blowing off steam in private, which is something we all do, but opportunism takes over in times like these.

If you need any proof of that last truism (do you need to prove a truism?) look at the way the two pretty boys (three if you include Blair) jumped in, (no doubt with a healthy private dose of “there but for the grace of God”) to act all shock horror at Brown’s minor gaffe.

The silliness of the whole thing did not, however, prevent a certain James A. Tyrell, who lives in Gozo but likes to pretend that he still breathes the air of the Six Counties (one wonders why, is he ashamed to admit he lives in Gozo?) from declaring from on high that the whole world knows that Brown is an idiot. Tyrell went on to make further inane pronouncements, over which a veil shall be drawn here since the person about whom he was being insolent is perfectly capable of defending herself) but in writing that Brown is an idiot, he only managed to confirm, if confirmation was needed, given the thoughts to which we’ve been privy coming from this gentleman, the only idiot in the tale certainly was not Brown.

Describing Brown as a media-naif, for instance, would be accurate and, in fact, too kind. Telling us that Brown has a public persona that, in the words of many of my old school reports, “could be better” would be right on the button.

But to read, from the pen of someone who does not even have the good grace to say where he’s really from (although it may be that he’s actually trying to fool no-one but himself, I suppose) that Brown is an idiot and that the whole world knows this is ludicrous in the extreme. Not even the pretty pair have the guts to try this one on.

On the subject of gaffes, it seems that our Minister of Finance has perpetrated one of gargantuan proportions, at least according to Mr Vince Farrugia, who seems to be happily (and I mean that sincerely) back in tip-top form.

The gaffe consists in not letting shops open on May Day, which tends to confuse me somewhat. May Day is the day dedicated to workers and all that mom and apple pie stuff, but Mr Farrugia, who represents not workers but employers, seems to think that it is pretty moronic of the Government, in the form of the Minister of Finance, to take the line that, erm, shop workers should be given the day off.

How much greater a gaffe would it have been had the Government said, OK, fine, open your shops all you like, but you’ve got to pay your people quadruple-rate and give them an extra day off to make up for this one?

Can you imagine the caterwauling that would have accompanied that?