Simon Carr on Gordon Brown

I am devoted to Simon Carr's Commons sketches in the Independent. He is more uneven than Simon Hoggart, but never gives the impression of satire by numbers that Hoggart can.

Here is Carr in yesterday's Independent:

There was a game I used to play with the children when they were young. They'd cower at the top of the stairs while I took on the role of the neighbourhood child molester. "Come here little boy," I'd coo up at them and they'd be tempted down the stairs step by step. "Come here, because I love you little boys and your lovely little toes-ies!" Then when they were just out of reach, the tone would change and I'd fling myself at their dangling feet roaring with predatory, voracious laughter.

I thought it wasn't legal to play "Come Here Little Boy" any more, what with England as it is but it's exactly the game Gordon Brown is playing with the Tories. Except if he does catch them they'll be molested like billy-oh.

It may or may not reassure you to know that Carr has written a book about bringing up his sons alone and that it is shortly to be a film with Clive Owen.