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the first press conference for independent candidates, with a report that is gracious to Martin Bell and less so to another TV-personality-turned-PPC:

"Looking at most independents you're put in mind of the Good, the Mad and the Ugly. To be fair, however, this lot had all signed up to the 'Bell principles'. This is meant to weed out loonies, racists, people with two heads, Esther Rantzen, etc."

Gordon Brown is pleased to be able to announce plans to bring Britons home:

"'And we are sending HMS Albion via Spain,' he declared. Does that sound magnificent? I think it was the most prime ministerial thing that he has ever said."

Ms Treneman goes on to sympathise with David Cameron at his corresponding press conference:

"Dave was reduced to rushing off to Brighton in order to have a seascape backdrop. We saw him, on a hill over Brighton, gulls swooping, looking fresh-faced. 'The idea of using the Royal Navy was actually something the Conservative Party very constructively suggested,' he claimed, sounding like a rather desperate Mr Me-Too."

Later in the week, the increased interest in Nick Clegg:

"The Lib Dems had reserved an entire train carriage for the media pack. A week ago, the Lib Dem press corps could fit into a phone box. The New York Times was there. Time magazine too. Someone speaking Italian... Was this, everyone wondered, Nick Clegg's Obama moment? Well, if it was, he was sharing it with a tractor. Well, actually two tractors (1949 Fergusons, since you ask)."

At Thursday's prime-ministerial debate, the apparent physical discomfort of the participants:

"Gordon Brown, his fringe stiff with hairspray, kept smiling like Jeff Tracey from Thunderbirds. Nick Clegg developed a case of the sweaty Bettys. Mop wallah! Quick! Swab down that man.
"David Cameron again frowned rather a lot, though he did remember to point his poached-egg eyes directly at the camera lens."

by Nick Clegg's camera technique:

"Like a schoolboy actor who has enjoyed a triumph in a minor role - the Gravedigger, say - he thinks he is now ready to play Hamlet."

the prime minister's attempt at a cheery demeanour:

"[N]one of the advisers have got rid of Gordon's smile. He wagged and dipped his head while putting on that ghastly grin, as if the nodding dog in a car was channelling the Joker."

that you can tell a lot from the protagonists' hair:

"Nick's was the youngest, tousled as from afternoon sex. Young people will like that, and it helps project his policy on Europe. Cameron's hair hadn't set properly, there was a bold sweep at the front but then it went flat the further into it you went. I wonder if that means anything. And Gordon's! The poor fellow, his hair is only going in one direction. Soon he'll have fulfilled Blair's promise of being 'whiter than white'."