Nick Clegg, an itchy knee and a finger up the bottom

By Conor Pope / @conorpope

One thing many commentators noted about David Cameron’s “Calm down, dear” fiasco was the contrasting reactions of Nick Clegg and George Osborne on either side of him.

The Chancellor gave his now familiar forced laugh. It’s the kind of mocking laughter that keeps bullied children awake at night. The laughter not of the bully, but of the bully’s stooge, echoing around the chamber of the child’s mind, compounding whatever humiliation has been handed to them. Laughter not caused by amusement, but by the heady feeling of power and superiority. It’s a laugh perfected by Richard Hammond.

Nick Clegg, on the other hand, remained stony-faced, as though he hadn’t heard the Prime Minister’s, er, “gag”. He tried to remain expressionless, but there w\as something else in there. It was something we haven’t seen in Nick Clegg for almost exactly a year now: something human. I replayed those few seconds again and again, trying to work out precisely what it was I could see. I know those frames by heart now. His eyes glaze over, he winces slightly, he looks the other way and scratches his knee. I found myself obsessed with those few seconds, I knew there was something in there.

Then Cameron said “Listen to the doctor.” The phrase made me grimace and I suddenly knew exactly what it was I was looking at. It was as if I’d been treated with the Ludovico Technique, for the moment Cameron said those words I was able to look at Nick Clegg’s eyes, peel back the glazing and see inside, into his soul (I can confirm that he does indeed still have one – it looks like the picture of Dorian Gray). And I knew exactly how he felt.

The reason Cameron’s words had such a Pavlovian affect on me was because of the last time I had visited the doctor myself. I had gone for consultation about what we shall call, for reasons of privacy, taste and childish humour, “bum problems”. As I divulged further details to my GP, she confirmed what I had been worried about: that to see what the problem was she was going to have to put a finger up my bum.

As she had a poke around, I led on my side, with my pants around my ankles, on an uncomfortable bed in a doctor’s surgery in south east London, staring at a blank wall. My eyes glazed over, I winced a bit, I clenched (my teeth), I looked away and my knee began to itch. One side of my mind tried to concentrate on anything other than quite how uncomfortable I was at that moment whilst the other side, all too aware of what was happening, kept trying to convince me that all of this was absolutely necessary.

Looking at Nick Clegg sat on the green benches that Wednesday afternoon I think I can safely say that his thought process was almost entirely the same. For me, on the doctor’s bed, those five seconds seemed to last five years. I can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for Nick Clegg, whose next four years seem destined to be a composition of uncomfortable five seconds. He will wince and he will clench. He will look away and pretend he’s somewhere else. He will keep convincing himself that all of this is absolutely necessary.

As I pulled back up my trousers and tried to pretend that the last remains of my dignity were not laying shattered in the tiny bin with that crumpled, lubricated glove, my doctor told me that everything was fine, nothing to worry about.

It was all completely unnecessary.