It felt more like a funeral service than a press conference and the Prime Minister looked like death warmed up. His eyebags were like little shelves, his brow furrowed, his voice like gravel. He kept saying “I am angry”, and it was just about the only thing he said that we knew, absolutely, must be true.

It was supposed to be a happy Monday. Gordon Brown had called us in at 9am to tell us the good news about the second phase of his bank rescue plan. But it didn't feel like a rescue. If our economy could be compared to a plane that hits a flock of birds, we are not floating on the Hudson, wearing life-jackets with boats heading our way. Instead it feels as if we are in the water — freezing, cold, confused, even as our pilot, one G. Brown, lectures us over the PA system about globalisation.

Yes, it really did feel that bad. Journalists - cold and wet - filled fewer than a third of the pews at the snap press conference. We spoke to each other in hushed tones. I almost expected Mr Brown to begin by saying: “Dearly beloved ...”

Actually, in a way he did. For he began with a little hymn of praise to himself. It was a “dearly beloved me” type of speech. He's stopped the banks from collapsing and, behold, the world has copied him. He's stimulated the economy and, yes, now almost every economy in the solar system (he's beyond global now) has followed suit. Now the Great Gordo wants the banks to lend and, lo, he expects the rest of the world to take his lead. It's strange how the world is both following Mr Brown, and it's to blame for everything. Nothing is Mr Brown's fault and nothing is Britain's fault. Yesterday he blamed all our woes on the US sub-prime market and foreign banks. Even the current crisis in lending has nothing to do with our banks: British banks ARE lending just as much as they ever have, it's those rotten foreign ones that have stopped.

But surely our own banks had not been honest with him?

“Yes I am angry at the RBS and what happened,” he said before he remembered that, actually, it wasn't RBS's fault. This wasn't a British problem at all! It was all because RBS had acquired a Dutch bank (foreign) which, in turn had been saddled with loads of sub-prime debt (foreign). I think Mr Brown was almost in nirvana (also foreign these days) as he explained this.

So why didn't he just go ahead and nationalise RBS? Mr Brown ignored this, but then came another outburst. “Anger is not enough! Rhetoric is not enough! One has to deal with the problem.”

But he was supremely vague about how he was doing this. How much did this plan cost? Was it a blank cheque? “Quite the opposite!” he announced. “You would be completely misunderstanding the situation if, in any way, you are suggesting this is a blank cheque.” But, as we never got a figure, it seemed that it was.

The questions became brutal. “Some people are saying that we are nothing more than a big hedge fund, not entirely unlike Iceland, and that national bankruptcy is a real possibility,” noted the man from ITN. “Whatever else this represents, surely it is total failure of bank regulation?”

Gordon, so angry that his eye-bags were packing up and leaving without a backwards glance, noted sharply that American sub-prime was to blame. “I utterly dispute what you are saying. I would urge you to be cautious in the remarks that you make.”

Did he have a message for Barack Obama? “I know he shares our goal that the first important financial decision that has to be made is to get credit moving!” Ah, so the message would be: follow me, Barack, to the promised land (or, as the case may be, the bottom of the Hudson).

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