Facepalm

Apparently he didn't realise he was being filmed as well when he did the radio broadcast - Mandleson saw it live on the TV and had to ring the studio to tell him. It would almost be possible to start feeling sympathy for him now as he's clearly completely out of his depth if it wasn't for the previous decade of hubris from him.

I wouldn't say out of his depth. More so that he's been unlucky to be caught doing what most of us do, including the other party leaders.

I personally would have thought better of him if he'd defiantly stood there and said; "Based on her opinions on immigration and comment on Eastern Europeans, yes i do believe she's a bigot and i don't apologise for that", before sticking two fingers up and blowing a raspberry.

I also personally believe the reporters stalking the lady like Jackals and bombarding her with ridiculous questions was much more embarrassing.

Me too - the grovelling was unnecessary.

The gaff even made it onto the CBC news with quite a prominant slot. They did make the point that other leaders have made similar mistakes with forgetting they had a microphone on eg Bush and Reagan but they were able to laugh these incidents off, and generally the indiscrete comments had been aimed at journalists or other politicians, not their own core voters. Brown, when you look at the film at the radio station and his demenour after visiting her house to apologise looks like he knows he's finished.

And very revealing was his comment "Who put me with that woman?" as he was being driven away......

So talking to punters isn't purely by chance then Gordon?