This collection of his work shows that Edward Pearce, formerly the parliamentary sketch writer of the Daily Telegraph, was at his best when he was being straightforward. 'Mr Heath, grey, dignified, dapper and snide'; or: '... a number of the dry little jokes for which Mr Foot was so noted before the domestic tragedy of having to lead his party befell him.'

But the further Mr Pearce strays from the simply descriptive into the realms of analogy and conceit, the more uncertain his writing becomes. 'Prime Minister's Question Time was, as usual, an unconstructive dialogue between telephone vandals and an Ansafone mechanism.' This is good enough to skim through on the train