Could anybody actually read Gordon Brown's handwritten note to Nadine Dorries, as published in this newspaper on Wednesday? “Gavotte,” it began. “Ben No Dimes.” One reader actually e-mailed me to ask if I could offer any more clues. I'm sure I saw the word “bagpuss” in there, and also “madagascar”. Thereafter, I was lost. Clearly the scandal of Damian McBride has stretched in directions we can little imagine.

You can tell why these people were so keen on e-mail, can't you? Poor Gordon. My heart goes out to the man, because my handwriting is the same. At school, they told me I was dysgraphic - a word I never heard again. Latterly, I have often suspected they made it up, to justify the fees. Out in the field, people tend to peer into my notebook and assume I'm taking shorthand. Usually, I'll use my BlackBerry.

When I scrawl handwritten thank-you cards, I pity the recipients. It's no fun for either of us. Often I'll phone them, to make sure they know it was me. At school, at university, it was merely other people who couldn't read my handwriting. A few years ago, it began to dawn on me that I could barely read it myself. Effectively, I have become a person who cannot write. When the bomb drops, I'll be a savage.

Is it that my handwriting has deteriorated over the years? Or is it, horrifyingly, just that I have fallen out of practice at reading it? Maybe it has always been exactly as bad as it is now. All those essays. All those exams. Were they all bagpuss/madagascar situations? Did people just have to guess what I meant? Were all my grades the benefits of doubts? It makes me sick to think of it. I could have just written anything.

Does this happen in Downing Street? Maybe. If the Prime Minister habitually shunned e-mail, and only communicated with his staff through almost but not entirely illegible notes scrawled in black marker pen, then the past two years would make a lot more sense. He writes that he's worried about fat cats, but they think he's hurried about VAT cuts. Down it goes, to 15 per cent. He leaves a Post-it in the kitchen, telling the cleaner to wax the floor. Alistair Darling sees it, and thinks he's supposed to tax the poor. Hence the 10p tax band disaster. And his election anxiety? Well, let's not go there.

Enfant du parody

To a small cinema in Soho this week to a screening of In the Loop, Armando Iannucci's new film about government spin and suchlike. If you liked The Thick of It, you'll love it, and if you didn't like The Thick of It, you should be locked in a small and darkened room until you realise why you were wrong. A good week for it, you might think. Well, yes and no.

It's about the Iraq war, mainly, but in many other respects it feels wonderfully timely. There are jokes about porn films appearing in the register of members interests, and lots of wonderful, suddenly-not-very-far-fetched vignettes about Downing Street flunkies trashing the careers of troublesome ministers. As ever, Peter Capaldi is mesmerisingly horrible as the foul-mouthed, Campbellesque spin doctor Malcolm Tucker. And yet, as I watched him, I started to wonder whether he might not be a bit five years ago, too.

The great joke about Tucker was his startling, door-kicking, bile-spewing awfulness. “This is how politics secretly is!” you were supposed to think. Only it hasn't been a secret for ages.

Tucker was a parody of Alastair Campbell, but to Campbell's successors you get the feeling he was more of a role model. These days, you'd far better parody spin doctors by making them aspirationally vile. Competitively vile. Seeing vileness as an end, rather than a means.

To the max

Speaking of means and ends, and barely plausible satire, did you hear the one about the anti-capitalist protester who asked Max Clifford to sell her story?

Nicky Fisher was filmed being struck by a policeman at one of the G20 protests against the global financial system. Max Clifford is the man who sold the last few months of Jade Goody. You wouldn't think he was quite the anti-capitalists' cup of tea.

Fisher works in an animal sanctuary. She lives in Brighton. These are fine anti-capitalist credentials. And this wasn't even the main demo, but the vigil that somebody arranged for poor Ian Tomlinson the next day, even before anybody knew the police had touched him. If you are prepared to schlep all the way into London for that sort of thing, you are obviously serious about your convictions. Right?

“We have been inundated with offers from journalists and it has obviously become quite a high-profile story,” her sister has told the press. “Max Clifford is dealing with it now and there is likely to be a big exclusive story in the pipeline.”

As I write this, I've just got an e-mail telling me it's gone to the Daily Express. Previously, reports suggested that she could get £50,000. Imagine how much she might have wanted if she was a capitalist.

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