Gordon Brown, with that terrifying, unearthly smile of his, has been wooing the American public, telling them that he loves them, while they shiver before the television and then quickly check that the kids are safe.

My favourite moment of this calamitous tour came when he was asked which of the two Democratic presidential candidates he preferred. Offstage, you could see the Obama and Clinton campaigns transfixed in horror with their hands clasped to their mouths. Please God, don’t let this strange creature endorse our candidate. Brown declined to choose and the rest of America presumably made up its mind to vote McCain, just to be on the safe side.

It is not just that Brown lacks the easy, vacuous, telegenic charm of his predecessor; that would be welcome. It is that he clearly now thinks he is charming, that he can do the ordinary guy shtick. He can’t; it is a surreal experience, like watching a fish trying to juggle.

He made an appearance on the US talent show, American Idol; I was away at the time and missed his spot and thus am unsure as to whether he won or not. I assume he recited those five famous convergence criteria for joining the euro, while Alistair Darling accompanied him on the spoons.

More recently he told a US chat show that he loved America and American TV and that he and Tony Blair were “very good friends”. In much the same way as Hitler and von Stauffenberg were, I suppose.

The American public is popularly supposed to be credulous and ignorant, 98% of them believing that the world was created in six days by an American good ol’ boy called Jesus H Christ and that Europe (or Yerp) is a small island off the coast of Australia, near Iraq. But even they must have balked at this stuff.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has afforded our prime minister the sort of welcome you or I might give a burglar who offered to look after the house while we went out to dinner. Bush will be tempted to tell Gordon, trailing badly in the polls, much what Lyndon B Johnson told Harold Wilson: “I won’t have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble . . . you run over here with your shirt tail hanging out.”

The remarkable thing is that Brown has managed to carve out of Iraq the worst of all possible worlds. As soon as his best friend Tony Blair had been evicted from No 10, the new regime let it be known that henceforth Britain would adopt a more independent approach to US foreign policy and that mistakes had been made over Iraq. This was duly noted, sourly, in Washington.

However, at home, there has been no apology for the war and troops are still there, doing nothing. It is a position of no practical, political or moral value and more damaging than even that terrifying grin.

* * * *

Alina Kabayeva is beautiful, 24 years old and can put her ankles behind her ears. As such, it was only a matter of time before the Olympic gymnast attracted the intellectual interest of her president, Vladimir Putin. His alleged dalliance with this extremely flexible and accommodating young lady, which he has recently and categorically denied, puts him a nose in front in the intense competition between international statesmen to see who can get up close and personal with the most agreeably youthful totty.

Until now Nicolas Sarkozy wore the yellow jersey, having successfully copped off with the pout-tastic raven-haired temptress Carla Bruni, and even took her to meet the Queen. Silvio Berlusconi, representing Italy, was an early favourite but fell by the wayside having allegedly propositioned two lubricious young women, one of whom was winner of the Italian “Miss Smiles and Songs” competition – only to find his wife screeching like a rabid baboon to any newspaper that would listen. Interestingly, Miss Smiles and Songs is now a member of the Italian parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs (I kid you not). I don’t know what Silvio’s wife makes of that.

No news yet from the British camp, but then we are always slow starters in these matters.

Laughing at the timid jihadis

It has always puzzled me why Muslim activists who urge others to blow themselves up do not take their own advice and do so themselves. Perhaps there is a passage in the Koran that I have missed. The obvious case is Omar Bakri Mohammed who, expelled from the UK, found himself hard up against the belly of the Israeli beast in Lebanon – but rather than head for glorious martyrdom at the infidel Jewish pig front line, instead whined piteously about being in danger and pleaded to be allowed home to Edmonton for a nice cup of tea.

Similarly, Abu Izzadeen, a follower of Bakri, who – along with five other jihadis – was sentenced to more than four years in prison on Friday for inciting terrorism. Why didn’t Abu and the others blow themselves up? I’d have contributed to the cost of the explosives and helped to find a safe place for them to indulge their sub-adolescent fantasies. A deserted terminal 5, for example, or Upton Park. As it is, they are now in prison – despite there being not the slightest shred of evidence that anyone was actually incited by them to do anything more than snigger at their splenetic absurdities.

It is a peculiar thing to find oneself on someone’s side and yet simultaneously to wish them dead. Still, such inconsistencies are what being a liberal is all about.

Harry Potter gibberish is better than yours, m’lud

Ah, the biter bit. Judge Robert Patterson Jr is presiding over the copyright case in New York involving our own J K Rowling and has pronounced himself “not a fan” of the Harry Potter books.

He said: “It is hard to follow a magical world filled with strange names and words that would be gibberish in any other context.” Now, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Bob Jr seems to have come up with an almost perfect description of the judiciary, both here and in his own country.

Harry Potter, like our legal system, is indeed an extremely lucrative institution choked full of the utmost gibberish, but at least the bloody house elves don’t charge you £300 an hour for speaking Latin – and Hogwarts is an entertaining fiction, rather than a reality which can lead to you being banged up for an eternity.

And most of us – Potter fans or otherwise – would rather play quidditch against a hippogriff, or something, than spend a single minute in the company of a lawyer or a judge (ceteris paribus).

* * * *

In addition to paving over every square inch of England in order to build their ghastly stores – they’re probably knocking one up in your living room as you read this – Tesco are now getting “tough” with anyone who says anything bad about them. This involves stuff like suing skint Thai journalists for a couple of million quid.

So let’s see if we can provoke a writ from the monkeys, just for fun – I’ll start: “Tesco is run by sexually depraved vampire bats who wish to destroy all of Britain as we know it.” Have a go yourself, either online or directly to Tesco headquarters. You could send them two nasty letters in the same envelope, as part of a buy-one-get-one-free deal.

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