Comment: Ken's big asset is he can walk the walk

Off we go then, with Labour's swooping unpopularity. Mr Livingstone has been an Independent and a Labour candidate. Being Ken the perverse, he was independent of New Labour when it was vastly popular. Now it is vastly unpopular, he has the bedraggled red rose next to his name. Even the Mayor at his most wily could not say that lugging the dead weight of Gordon Brown into this election is an asset.

Mr Johnson keeps saying "If I'm lucky enough to be mayor," which is odd. He needs to use the last week to lay claim to the job; it shouldn't be about luck now. But he has developed in focus and heft: and he isn't easily put off when he gets into his stride.

Ken shows a pachyderm hide until we get to the argument about his old "concentration camp guard" remarks, and a young man whose grandparents perished in the Holocaust says simply: "How dare you fling words like that about?"

It hits home. Ken grimaces that he's been "On the end of the Standard for 30 years" - which presumably includes the mutually agreeable period when he was writing for it.

"Politics is all about perception," drones Mr Paddick, who states the bleeding obvious with great emphasis.

We race through immigration: Mr Johnson won't say what scale of it he wants and tries the Balliol way out. "In classical economic theory ..." Beta minus there.

"Shut up and let someone else speak," says Mr P, who is the rudest one of the trio by far but somehow gets away with it.

We have reached the point now where the only surprising answers come from offside questions.

"Are you all men of morals?" asks some representative of the civic inquisition.

"I suppose my behaviour has disqualified me from leading any church in the land," muses Mr Livingstone. Oh, I don't know: there must be some polygamous sects out there who'd have him as a pin-up.

Boris, questioned about his former affairs, tries to answer about Tube fares. It's one way to change the subject we might all bear in mind. "Darling, I did something terrible on that office-bonding weekend, but did you know that the Oyster card offers very reasonable rates?"

"People cannot accuse me of lying or distorting the truth," intones pious Mr Paddick, who is asking for a custard pie before the end of the campaign.

What food would the candidates be? Boris starts to say something from Waitrose then thinks better of it and switches to Tescos (as if). "Fruit and veg - good for you and good for London," says the Mayor, who wins the trivia round but must wish that the real race was so easily clinched.

Meanwhile, some of us are beginning to hear Ken's self-satisfied whine, Boris's evasions and Mr Paddick's homilies in our sleep. Bring on the real thing before we all go mad.