Jesus, pm came on and I wasn’t out of Soho. In the late evening streets the full fellini was assembling. From the Algerian shop came the smell of scented coffees. It had been there for decades and was of course an Italian shop originally, and forever. Changed its identity in the second world war to avoid getting its windows smashed. Who knew what side Algeria was on?

Gay men with weird beard arrangements — you know, muttonchops with no goatee, a pilgrim and a toothbrush — were starting to appear on the street like Gog and Magog coming out at the chimes of six. For half the day Soho is a local village. After four, it’s like a baboon’s flanged buttocks and you either get far out or stay home all night.

In the five quid barber beside the Coach and Horses, the queue was five deep. I cursed my lassitude and jumped in a cab.

The Diarist had called earlier and said she couldn’t make the Orwell political writing prize shortlist announcement, and would I go, on the de facto behalf of a major London newspaper.

I was sick as a bald dog, with a wheezing chest infection which has been going around town, and exacerbated by some metabolism jamming with an illegal version of my blood sugar medication, purchased by mail order from Mexico.

The tablet — labelled “Azagura!” like some bad movie — sets me at a base of 4.5 in the imperial measurement, mean, lean, ready for action and above all capable of serious boozing. Your correspondent’s pancreas began to malfunction five years ago. At that point he thought it a tragedy. He now feels it to be a liberation, a revelation. Personality is a construct of blood composition. Change the ratios, and you can pretty much be what you wanna be. For twelve hours at last. After that, it’s like the Polish government arriving at Katyn.

So, anyway, hovering at the edge of hypoglycemia, I was in a cab barreling towards Canary Wharf. Possibly I should have stayed in, but I am in thrall to the Diarist, the person I wanted to be when I was in my twenties — whip-smart, better-read, and working in the London media. Alas she hates her job, and it keeps making her sick, which is why I am subbing tonight.

The taxi slowly sloughs the old part of London, Covent Garden, the City, London Wall, and slowly moves into the transitional space, Rotherhithe, Wapping, ancient areas successively redeveloped by the Luftwaffe, the planners, and Thatcher, and then to the full megilla itself, Canary Wharf. If Thatcherism has a spiritual home, Canary Wharf is it, towering buildings eight minutes old, in pseudo stonemason style, with the occasional ancient pub preserved from the wreckers sticking out like an afterthought.

The Orwell prize had scheduled its longlist and shortlist announcements to coincide with the first leaders televised debate of the election, which they would play live after some debate about “had the political class lost touch with the public?” or something. The concept of the “political class” — an idea hitherto prominent in proto-fascist early twentieth century theorists like Mosca and Pareto — had been revived by Peter Oborne, to explain the way in which the major parties had become sealed, self-selecting organisations immune to any public action.

It had caught on, principally because of a grievous lack of class analysis in Britain, which would have revealed that a seamless media-professional-lower aristocracy run the joint. Left and right doesn’t matter much. Your dad could be a baronet, or a Marxist philosopher, you’ll still be running the joint.

Last year’s Orwell prize giving had been a doozy.

“I don’t think this one will be as exciting,” the chair said, to weak laughter.

Last year, chaotic drunk former leftist, now pro-war neocon Nick Cohen had denounced one time ultracon now anti-war something Peter Hitchens and rambled on crazily about government plots to sack journalists — the amazing performance is here, well worth a watch.

This year’s was like a lantern lecture by the Wakefield vicar on birds of Surrey. Through the plashy fens, wanders the questing vole. After the enormous longlists had been announced, seemingly taking in every book, blog and article published in the last year, the floor was yielded to a debate as to whether the “political class had lost the will of the people”, which turned into a barney between apparatchiks, Mary Riddell (?) hacking into Helena Kennedy as to who had got Stockholm Syndrome worse, vis a vis the political establishment, vs the growing anti-political establishment.

Conscious of my duty, I scoped the crowd for celebs, and saw only …well Peter Hitchens, sitting beneath a photo-portrait of a large grinning Tutsi woman with enormous teeth. Hitchens, P getting his head eaten by an enormous black woman — it seemed fair.

The Orwell debate finished. The leaders debate was about to begin. I texted the Diarist for further instructions.

The phone buzzed with a txt. It was the Actress.

She was back from Norway, the fjord-thing hadn’t taken. She remarked, however, that in the ensuing seven days the ex-, and I quote, “ate my dance card”, and that this was cause for consideration about the future.

This is clearly a mercurial comment, designed to drive me mad with wondering, and the obvious and only response is to croudsource a response.

Therefore anyone with an explanation as to what this phrase could possibly mean should email it to:

nedkellyatemydancecard@hotmail.co.uk*

And I will presume as per crowdsourcing principles that the most common answer is likely to be the truest. First to supply correct answer gets a free First Dog signed cartoon, or I will come round to your house and sing a series of lachrymose teenage anthems currently on the iTunes, not excluding most of the catalogue of Green Day. Dinks.

OK where were we? Oh the debate. Well what do you think? It was three dead people swapping minor political variations on a theme. Nick Clegg, Lib-Dem leader spoke first and was quite dynamic but had the disadvantage of not mattering, so everyone was at the bar while he was talking about the deficit, can’t afford anything, haven’t acknowledged, living in fantasy etc etc.

Brown, in a purple tie — these arseholes can’t even wear red anymore — sounded like, to quote the great HST, “a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow on next year’s crop”, and every time Cameron came on, people, and not just Labour sybarites, laughed spontaneously.

The rules agreed to were the best of British — no applause, no audience participation.

Oh God, we appear to have run out of time, the rest of this report will continue on The Stump, to be re-assembled at a later date.

*Ned Kelly? Don’t ask. Seriously. And don’t put it in the comments trail, it will just get ugly.