As CNN keep boasting tonight’s YouTube debate was a “first.”: It was a shame that the suits controlling this white heat cutting edge format were all made of asbestos.

The debate opened with the increasingly shoddy Anderson Cooper showing why certain video questions had been rejected. After telling us for several months how unusual and original these questions would be because of the format he then tells us that questions from people “in disguise” were persona non grata. So who was the snowman?

It would have been nice for the viewer at home to be able to see the video’s of the questioners but for some unknown reason CNN seemed to think that a far shot of the same screen that the candidates were seeing was acceptable. From what I saw they might as well have allowed disguised questions because a lot of the time most of video was as dark and poorly defined as to be anonymous.

Of the questions themselves; there was very little that wasn’t a variation on the same sort of theme that has already be asked and answered before.

Anderson Cooper who couldn’t have moderated a debate in a Benedictine monastery had about as much control of the candidates as an alcoholic in a brewery; he could be heard calling “time” about as often as I heard my father doing the same with the only difference being that in my father’s public house……Time meant time.

When these candidates heard Anderson say “time” they obviously thought that he was giving them more.

Obviously there are front runners in this race but in watching this debate I seriously began to worry that I was suffering from tunnel vision as Anderson seemed to direct almost all of the questioning to these front runners who were conveniently centre stage causing Mike Gravel to make several cutting comments and probably cut his own throat in the process.

Next comes the Republican YouTube debates and I swear; I can see Rudy and crew shaking in their collective thousand dollar boots.