Geoffrey Boycott was a great English batsman. England could certainly do with him now.

David Cameron at the Conservative Party Conference

His style was to put up a straight bat to any ball that couldn’t be nudged along the ground for a couple of runs.

Gordon Brown is a bit like that at Prime Minister’s Questions. Sidestepping every targeted query from David Cameron, he either puts up a cloud of technicalities to deflect what he detects as an incoming missile, or spits out a stream of lies and misrepresentations.

The difference between Boycott and Brown is that the batsman was brave and talented and often led his team to victory, while Brown is a cowardly cheat, happy to take the applause of his own side for his cynical mangling of the truth.

It is almost unbearable these days to watch this hopeless charade. Most Labour MPs are out of their depth and are clearly undeserving of the perks/unverified expenses/John Lewis list package they receive in remuneration.

Today, Brown played the straightest of bats on the James Crosby affair. Former head of disgraced bank HBOS, Brown had appointed him deputy head of the FSA, the banking watchdog — you really couldn’t make that one up. When scandal hit again, the PM “let him go” an hour or so before PMQs. He then got a backbencher to ask a loaded question enabling him to distance himself from his former best friend.

With pals like Brown, who needs weapons of mass destruction?

The only chink of lightness in today’s nauseating spectacle was Titiangate.

Last week the increasingly desperate Brown likened himself to Titian, the Italian painter of auburn haired women, who, he said, lived to the ripe age of 90 and “still didn’t know how to paint”.

David Cameron, questioning his stats, claimed that the great one (Titian, not Brown) died at 86.

As a public service, I trawled through my library to pin down the truth on this important question and came up with conflicting evidence:

All sources agree that Titian died in 1576. However, Philips Encyclopedia gives his birth as 1485, which would make him 91, give or take a year. Hutchinson’s Encyclopedia of Biography claims his birth was in 1487, making him 89. Again, if he were born at the end of the year and died in the early months, he would be 88 at death.

Conservative Central Office is now saying that the great man died in 1490 which would make him 86 or …er… 85. Who says so? “Modern scholars”, apparently. This one will run and run.

Thus has the British Parliament been reduced to disputes over the age of an ancient foreign artist who specialized in saucy women with red hair.

What have we done to deserve this mob?

David Cameron, though, put up a stout performance against impossible odds.

Cameron: 8/10, Clegg: 5, Brown: -2

John Evans

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