I like to relax by reading gruesome true crime books - spa days just aren't my thing. When reading the biographies of infamous killers and maniacs, you might skip to the photo section and see pictures of them as bouncing babies. How cute they looked, how innocent. There could have been no way of knowing what monsters they'd turn into.

But thanks to our gutted, exhausted, discredited political culture we can now do the same with our party leaders. We can get a glimpse of how they looked before power struck them, and without having to wait for a biography to come out. There's no need to look at baby pics to see what they once were, these vacant-gazed toffs, we can simply look at the current crop of spads - the Special Advisors - and know that we're looking at our future leaders. From these pampered boys spring Prime Ministers.

Cameron, Miliband, Clegg, they were all once spads. That's now the career route to get into power. God fordid a party leader would have a real job which would enable them to pronounce with authority upon policies, backed up with some knowledge and experience. Some rough 'n' tumble. Instead, these posh boys wriggle and smirk from posh schools to Oxbridge to a spad job to government.

So look at the young men who make up the current spad pack and know that several of those entitled faces will soon be talking down to you from a podium, where he'll be insisting you're a 'hard-working family' because that's what his spad gang have told him to say. 

Thankfully, Ballot Monkeys (C4) has arrived to ridicule these people. It's a new comedy series set on the campaign battle buses of the UK parties. The coaches are crowded and stuffy, not with eager campaigners, but with career-minded spads, limp rosettes, pathetic leaflets, stickers, laptops and empty coffee cups. The voters are treated with contempt though held in higher esteem than the politicians.

Interestingly, some segments of Ballot Monkeys were filmed on the day of transmission, meaning space was left for up-to-the-minute jokes and references, and the writers weren't shy about cramming these in. Miliband as a 'happy warrior' was mocked as was the Tory excitement at trending just behind Poldark's pecs. We also heard of UKIP's latest abomination where a councillor mocked the drowning migrants as 'Labour's latest floating voters.'

Besides the topical humour was the constant, desperate maddening idiocy which is a party's attempts to woo us come election time. Labour's frantic strategy was to make everything 'hopey-changey' or, to put it more bluntly, 'Convince people that your tosser is less of a tosser than the other lot's tosser.' But if satire needs to reflect reality, then how realistic was it for the Labour bus to have a big, tough-talking, gruff Yorkshireman onboard amidst the sleek, PPE-schooled poshos? Didn't they eradicate all of them when they ditched Clause IV?

Things are worse on the doomed Lib Dem bus where Ben Miller plays a desperate, gasping, red-eyed spad. 'We can achieve modest triumphs!' he yells to his sad, bewildered troops. And how can they fail with a campaign slogan like STRONGER. FAIRER. NICER.

The Tory strategy was clear: 'Don't let our guys stand under any exit signs!' Meanwhile UKIP want public breastfeeding to be a hanging offence and one of them is worried that their black assistant might be a wrong'un, even though he's simply handing out Hob Nobs with a cheery smile. But 'terrorists eat biscuits too….'

I enjoyed Ballot Monkeys and it packed a far stronger satirical punch than ITV's Newzoids. Not only were the jokes better but Newzoids dabbled too much in celebrity whereas this was hard-core politics, dealing with spads and PR, which is clearly where the power behind the throne lies.