Villagate - Oh Dear Dave!

Brain Fade. It was so hilarious for the right-wing press when it was Green Party leader Natalie Bennett suffering it over housing policy. That was not a problem: they laid into her with their usual inimitable style, or lack of it. But how different it was when it was offered up as an excuse - and, it has to be said, a pretty lame one - for Young Dave making the kind of gaffe that suggests he is not really down with the proles.

Look cheps, that's one of those round ball games on that screen over thyah! Jolly good sheow!!

Cameron was making one of those speeches that he delivers to carefully selected audiences, at venues where - as in his “visit” to Crewe, when most of the locals didn’t even know he’d been in the area - opposition is not so much unwelcome, but totally excluded. He was waxing lyrical during a speech on opportunities for ethnic minority Britons, and, under no pressure at all, put the ball in his own net.

Britain was, he told, “a shining example of a country where multiple identities work … Where you can be Welsh and Hindu and British, Northern Irish and Jewish and British, where you can wear a kilt and a turban, where you can wear a hijab covered in poppies … Where you can support Man Utd, the Windies and Team GB all at the same time. Of course, I'd rather you supported West Ham”.

Jolly good sheow! Or rather not: Dave has previously claimed that he supported Aston Villa. The rotten lefties were on to it like a shot: “Auguste” Balls Tweeted “Hey David Cameron... I'm off to see that football team I support this afternoon. Name escapes me... they play in yellow... Watford?” Balls supports Norwich City, because, well, someone has to. Tone’s former chief spinner Big Al was rather less forgiving.

“Says a lot about his character which impacts upon policy. Out of touch. Phoney. Believes nothing”. Cameron himself offered “I had what Natalie Bennett described as a brain fade. I'm a Villa fan... I must have been overcome by something... this morning. But there we are, these things sometimes happen when you are on the stump”. But it was not convincing anyone. So someone had to go out there and spin for England.

And that person was James Manning at SunNation, who proved only that, when it comes to spin, Shane Warne he ain’t. “Aston Villa fan David Cameron today urged his audience to support West Ham … It’s pretty obviously an autocue fail rather than actual forgetfulness. Let’s dissect the exact moment it happened”. Let’s not: as the BBC reported, and Cameron himself admitted, it was not in his speech.

“I literally opened my mouth and I was going off-piste … I was then busking about other things you can support and was... I don't know what happened to me, it was just one of those things”. So why try and spin it? Ah well. As Alastair Campbell told, and the Sun knows, real football fans don’t just forget the name of their team. The Sun does a lot of sport - especially football. So a lot of football fans read it.

Many of them have already realised Cameron is a fake fan. You can’t spin that one.