Dumb and dumber

For those who've made a living poking fun at President George W Bush, the sands of time are running out fast. Sadly, for Humphrey Lyttleton, they've already run out - but here he was on top form taking the mick out of the man whose intellect and rhetorical gifts were, amazingly enough, deemed sufficient for him to blag his way into the top job anywhere.

The good news, for those who like to savour the absurdity of the richest and most powerful characters in the world's richest and most powerful country, is that the Republican vice presidential candidate (potentially a 72-year-old's heart beat from the presidency) apparently believes that the world is only about 6,000 years old. To carry on with a running theme, we may not know whether the neanderthals were brighter or dumber than most of us, but I suspect they might well have been brighter than someone who might be getting her hands on the nuclear button. Sweet dreams, everybody.