Enough with the kitchens, please!
If I see one more politician leaning nonchalantly against a pristine draining board I think I might implode.
Where is the precarious pyramid of plastic and glass bottles waiting to be dumped in the recycling and the brittle, dehydrated plant by the window?
Where is the used tea-bag holding bay on the edge of the sink?
Cameron and Milliband have both got young kids, so where are the smeared fingerprints on the fridge door and the crayon scribbles on the wall which are immune to every cleaning fluid known to man?
I found the rose-tinted scenes from Chez Cameron in particular set my teeth on edge.
Instead of coercing his family into acting out aspirational scenes from a Boden catalogue, how's about getting down to the office and getting on with some proper work. A spot of televised debating, perhaps?
At least Milliband had the self-awareness to try and pass off his slightly drab kitchenette as the main family kitchen although that also back-fired spectacularly when he was rumbled and dubbed "Two Kitchens" Milliband.
Nicola Sturgeon coasted closest to reality with her confession that her husband did all the cooking and had been up all night cleaning said kitchen, but this admission is more likely to induce feelings of acute envy from much of the frazzled, multi-tasking female electorate than a sense of solidarity.
The kitchen used to be the poor relative to the "good" sitting room. It was the generally unseen back room where you stacked the dirty dinner party dishes and closed the door.
But now, alas, it has gone the way of the lounge in terms of lifestyle aspiration. Celebrity chef recipe books are the new coffee table tomes and pots of herbs the new bonsai trees.
What with the contents of our fridges being the new marker of one's social class, faux rustic open kitchen shelves are now as contrived a display as a trophy cabinet.
No. Politicians, if you feel compelled to give us a slice of the "real you", why not throw open that unedited cupboard under the stairs or perhaps the spare room - that unloved, style-free zone stuffed with incriminating evidence of all those slightly geeky, embarrassing hobbies, which could provide a sure-fire distraction from the dozens of pressing questions voters really need answered.
Although, while the fall-out from Cameron's kitchen-gate scandal rumbles on, I can't help thinking that he would never have let slip his retirement plans had he not been "chillaxing" over a chopping board at the time.
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