I’ve written before here about how Armando Unfunnucci‘s consistent inability to raise a laugh with his “humorous” Guardian column used to bond me with complete strangers on the Tube. Now he’s returned, replacing decaying homophobic bore Richard Ingrams on the back of the main section of The Observer. Today his closing flourish of wit was to invent a public statement by Menzies Campbell denying that he is or has ever been a Liberal Democrat.

The possibility of a joke along these lines flitted across my mind for about fifteen nanoseconds last week—just long enough for the shame that I had allowed something so weak and obvious to crawl its benighted way out of my subconscious to provoke nausea. Reading Iannucci’s version of such a terrible gag, I was overwhelmed by mirth in a way I hadn’t experienced since the day last summer when I collected a parking ticket outside a wake.