ED Miliband emerged from his potentially risky encounter with the comedian-turned activist Russell Brand unscathed and defended his decision to engage with the disengaged.
The Labour leader used his encounter with the self-styled revolutionary to declare he wanted to see "real, concrete, deliverable change" for Britain rather than generate a kind of Barack Obama-style "euphoria".
David Cameron had dismissed the event as a "joke" while Mr Miliband was widely mocked for slipping into an estuary accent and aping some of Mr Brand's gestures and mannerisms during the course of their 20-minute conversation, which took place in the kitchen of the comedian's east London home.
But the Labour leader defended his decision to be cross-examined by Mr Brand, saying it was important to engage with people who normally had little interest in mainstream politics.
"The reason I've done it is because there are lots of people who are not going to vote in this election, who think it doesn't matter, who think who you vote for doesn't matter. Russell Brand has said that in the past. I thought it was right to take the argument to him. Voting makes a huge difference."
During the course of a largely sympathetic interview - which was posted on the comedian's YouTube channel The Trews - Mr Miliband said Mr Brand was "quite wrong" to say people should not vote as politics was unable to deliver change.
"It requires pressure and it takes effort and it takes people to demand the change to happen so I'm not looking for euphoria, I'm looking for a sense of this is real, concrete, deliverable change," he said.
"People want a sense that the country is run in a different way," added the Labour leader.
Mr Brand replied: "I completely agree with you Ed", adding afterwards the party leader had shown that he understood "the way the country feels at the moment".
Meantime, the left-wing New Statesman magazine delivered a withering assessment of Mr Miliband's five years as opposition leader, saying he had shown "severe limitations and strategic weaknesses" yet still backed Labour for the election.
It blamed the SNP surge in Scotland on Mr Miliband's "complacent" attitude and warned that he would "almost certainly be reliant on the support of a large Nationalist bloc to govern" in the next parliament.
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