Top satirist Armando Iannucci reported in yesterday’s Observer on the election fever which has taken grip of Washington DC:

Usually, America doesn’t really cover international news in the media, but this week the talk in Washington has been of one story and no other: the fight for leadership of the Lib Dems by Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg. The whole of the US has gone down with Lib Dem election fever. People have been coming up to me in the street and, when they hear my quaintly mild Scottish accent, have been saying to me: ‘Hey, are you from England? What’s the latest on those Lib Dem guys? You think Clegg has got it sewn up in the swing counties?’

Everywhere I turn, I see people wearing campaign buttons saying things like, ‘I’m A Huhne Goon’. Or ‘I Will Willingly Beg For Clegg’. And, to cash in, Sony Pictures has just announced a three-movie deal to start filming the dramatisation of the life of Menzies Campbell (though mostly concentrating on his time as an Olympic athlete).

Irony: so much more fun than reality.