You can take tablets to get rid of worms

The phrase “every word scrutinised” and the sight of worm trails stretching out across the TV screen make me shiver. The West Wing boxset, a politics educational series that should have been co-produced by the Open University, long ago taught us the techniques of US pollsters.

Spoof worm trail graph showing the author's dissatisfaction with broadcaster’s worm trail analysis

But just because political parties can afford to wire subjects up to boxes and force them to record their second by second reactions to the witterings of three party leaders doesn’t mean to say that I appreciate ITV News doing the same and then devoting 20 minutes or more of an extended News at Ten to show me undecided voters’ worms.

It’s tedious. And as the graph shows, it was a real turn off for this sampled voter.

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