Who goes? You decide ... (You should hear what they say about each other in the Diary Room, too). Photograph: Peter Jordan/PA
While Gordon Brown spent yesterday touring television studios to promote his bond scheme to fund the immunisation of 500 million children, keen observers of the chancellor spotted another important announcement. "I like TV programmes like The X Factor, Dragons' Den and The Apprentice," declared Mr Brown, previously thought to spend his weekends curled up on a sofa with light-hearted tomes on neo-classical endogenous growth theory.
Given the mockery occasioned by his remark that Arctic Monkeys "really get you going in the morning", (he later blamed it on a journalist, but ruined the moment by saying he preferred Coldplay), a lesser man would have avoided further references to pop culture. Yet the choice was oddly plausible: the shows promote aspiration and the idea that anyone can make it, the chancellor explained. Both are eminently Brownian notions.
Besides, he isn't the first politician to declare his love for reality TV shows. David Cameron liked Dragon's Den so much he based the Tory conference around it, encouraging would-be MPs to pitch their policy ideas to a panel of senior Conservatives. Poor Menzies Campbell had a less successful brush with light entertainment, when a senior MP - attempting to rebrand the Lib Dem leader - described catching him eating fish and chips while watching Strictly Come Dancing. It was a charming vignette... until Tory blogger Iain Dale pointed out that the show was not on at the time.
Oops. Though politicians are prone to putting their foot in it whenever they venture near NME or Heat territory, they do seem to love pop culture. On a human level, it's hardly surprising if people who work long hours in arduous jobs, going home to a stack of red boxes, find a dog-eared Agatha Christie a more enjoyable diversion than the latest offering from Per Olov Enquist.
More cynically, there's little doubt which plays better in the focus groups. Declare your love of EastEnders and you are one of the people. Announce that your favourite film is Les Quatres Cents Coups and it might get a bit more tricky. Remember: Tony Blair was instructed to woo Take A Break Woman - not the London Review of Books Bluestocking.
The perils of high culture were best illustrated when Sir George Young - then a Conservative cabinet minister - infamously described the homeless as "the sort of people you step over on the way out of the opera". Though housing campaigners accepted that he meant it ironically, history has been less kind. By referencing an artform so firmly associated with a prosperous, snobbish elite, he implied that the Tories were out of touch not just with the suffering of rough sleepers but with ordinary voters. Few would recall the remark these days had he said "on the way out of bingo".
Sure, it's obligatory to interrogate culture ministers about their last play/novel/ballet - and then snicker if whatever they cite is entertainingly lowbrow. And Kim Howells (now Middle East minister, but responsible for culture at the time) was briefly tagged a philistine when he criticised the "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit" of Turner Prize contestants. But even then, most of the press was on his side.
And it would take a brave minister to volunteer a love of Proust, Lars Von Trier or Stockhausen when invited on to GMTV.
Reality shows, however, have a particular appeal. Politicians are convinced that such shows engage the British people in a way which party politics no longer can - note their frequent claim that more young people vote in Big Brother than in elections.
It's a depressing thought - but fortunately not actually true, according to the BBC.
Perhaps the real lesson that politicians should take from Dragon's Den is not that anyone can make it to the top, but that people can be engaged by the most unpromising material (I think of the contestant who tried to flog a special gadget to stop cut cucumber going soggy...) if it's presented the right way. Coming soon: I'm a Leadership Contender ... Get Me Out of Here.
