Hot on the smoking heels of the third Alternative Report into the televised leaders’ debates comes the Report of Reports – 63336’s overall picture of how the three leaders stuttered, deviated, joked and buzzworded their way through the three TV debates. We don’t so much care who “won” the debates – voting on 6 May is all that counts, after all – we just revel in the detail of their performances, and the number of times they charmed, surprised or scared us. Not to mention how knackered they looked by the end.
Some conclusions we’ve come to:
Q. Who had the most fun over the 3 debates?
A. Underdog Nick Clegg was the most relaxed, with 13 jokes, laughs & flirts over the 3 weeks. David Cameron took it all more seriously with only 7, while Brown managed 11.5.
Q. Who was the most disagreeable?
A. Gordon Brown agreed just twice with the other 2 leaders, while disagreeing 80 times. Nick Clegg agreed the most (14 times), but also disagreed 66 times – more than David Cameron’s 59 objections.
Q. What did they do with their hands?
A. Nick Clegg was the “handiest”, using both hands to emphasise his points a huge 851 times over the 3 debates. That’s nearly 4 times as much as David Cameron. Both Gordon Brown & Nick Clegg used their right hands twice as much as their left, while left-handed Cameron was more evenly balanced.
Q. Who told the most jokes over the 3 debates?
A. David Cameron just pips the others with a total of 6 jokes over Clegg & Brown’s 5 each. With the total at only 16 jokes across the 4.5 hours of debate, Michael McIntyre’s probably not worried.
You can also still get our three individual reports, from week one, week two and week three.
Intriguing, what was Brown’s half joke/laugh/flirt? How did you know it wasn’t a whole one?
He half-flirted with Mary Slattery during the Sky debate (the 2nd). Nick Clegg “managed a whole one” by beaming at her and telling her she looked young, but Brown’s was a pale imitation – sadly I don’t have a note of exactly what it was, but the deduction of half a point was probably to do with style (poor chap).
So, who’s actually going to win?