When Michael Howard was appointed leader of the Conservative Party, I rather thought the fun times were over. The last two leaders were both Michael Foot type figures for me - essentially useless, but curiously endearing and certainly posing no real threat to their opponents. There is much harmless fun to be had watching political incompetence at work and both Hague and IDS provided us with a plentiful supply.

When Howard came along there was danger that the supply would dry up. Here was a man who had already been in high office and carried a reputation as a single minded conviction politician. A man to lead the Tories on their long march back to political credibility - the Conservatives' Neil Kinnock, perhaps. Maybe even John Smith, if not quite Tony Blair. In any event he wasn't supposed to be entertainingly loopy.

So it was with much delight that I read about his credo. Okay, so it's old news, by bloggie standards, but it's good old news.

What were they thinking of, those Saatchi boys, when they sat down with the remit to re-launch Transylvanias's finest's image? Well, it turns out they were thinking along the lines of "let's rework this pile of banal old bollocks and pass it off as our own."

Mind you, you have to admire Howard's chutzpah, if nothing else. When challenged with the similarities he managed to make it sound as if Rockefeller has ripped him off.

Many bloggers have had fun with this already, so I won't add to the general merriment, but there's one aspect to the story that intrigued me, and that was the Tories' conversion to the exciting world of New Media.
You can just picture the scene: the grandees are assembled while a bright young thing extolls the virtues of t'internet as a means of distributing a political message. "Viral marketing," he says, "that's what we should be looking at in the 21st century. It's cheap, it's effective and above all it appeals to today's people - the young, the tech savvy. What we do is get the Saatchis to cobble together something - it doesn't matter what, it's the medium that counts. Anyway, we seed it by emailing it to all our members and sympathisers. And here's the clever bit: they send it on to all their mates. It's called word of mouse, you see. Geddit? Word of mouse. And because it's by email and not anything to do with traditional media, it creates a buzz, see. There's a like, underground element to it. You wouldn't believe it, these things spread like wildfire. Within hours millions of people will see it. It's the politics of tomorrow."

He sits back in triumph. The grandees beam. "Capital idea, young man. Capital. Off you go and sort it out."

As the bright young thing closes the door behind him, the grandees confer some more.

"Double page spread in the Times?"

"That will do nicely."