BACK in the days when English football clubs were half-decent in Europe, some TV exec woke up one day and thought it would be a wizard jape to start televising Parliament. Clearly, The Dukes of Hazzard and Miami Vice just weren’t cutting enough mustard, entertainment-wise.

It didn’t go down well with everybody. Some felt it would trivialise the United Kingdom’s hallowed democratic process. Others were just worried Noel Edmonds would be fronting the coverage and turning it into Swap Shop.

Whatever your view, it can be argued that it signalled the start of British politics being kicked into the modern age, although it may also have set in motion a chain of events which led to the invention of Boris Johnson.

But for all the blogs, twittering and guest appearances on Have I Got News For You which have resulted, one thing the seats of British power have never really got into is slang. Unlike Ghana.

There has been a right old stink there this week after “tweaa”, a colloquial term which “expresses disapproval” – much like when somebody says “I’m not having a go, but…” – started being used a lot during Parliamentary debates and was banned, a decision which appears to have been about as popular as a pound shop in Wrexham.

As somebody who regularly attends council meetings – the film of my life is currently “in turnaround” – I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with a bit of slang being thrown into proceedings. I’ve felt for some time that local government would be much more enticing if it was reworked along the same lines as live darts.

I’m confident there would be a greater degree of public interest in proceedings if the Lord Mayor of York entered the council chamber in a cloud of dry ice just as the riff to She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult kicks in.

The problem is that, when it comes to freeform, knockabout, off-message politics, other countries are simply far superior. To truly engage with the man and woman in the street, politics needs to have that element of utter shambles which the UK never seems to execute convincingly.

Okay, you might have an MP tripping over their words or getting the sums wrong every now and again and being greeted with a response from the backbenches which sounds like a field of boozed-up cows.

But that pales into insignificance against the three-prime-ministers-a-week soap opera which has made Italian politics what it is today, renegade Toronto mayor Rob Ford or the colourful private lives of successive French presidents.

A row over whether a senior politician was asked to get off his bike, and in what terms, is not going to compete in that sort of company.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Westminster seemed to have a sex/financial scandal every other day, we were easily punching our weight. Despite the best efforts of the likes of Chris Huhne, that golden age of British politics appears to have passed. But even if we were to compensate through the more widespread adoption of slang, I just don’t believe our mob are funny enough to carry it off.

There have been unwise attempts. Tony Blair referenced Catherine Tate in his resignation speech to prove he was a man of the people, just before heading off to get £250,000 a pop for talking about being Tony Blair, and it was about as humorous as a Steve Coogan character who isn’t Alan Partridge.

David Cameron quoted Michael Winner, which should be a disciplinary matter in itself, and found himself up to his wellies in hassle. Even George Osborne has started saying “gonna” rather than “going to” in interviews, although I understand the image consultant charged with de-poshing the Chancellor has since moved on to something less challenging, like getting Kim Jong-un to do a stint on Soccer Saturday.

None of this means British politicians shouldn’t try, of course. I would be happy to give William Hague full credit if he ended a speech outlining the Government’s stance on the Syrian crisis by jabbing a finger at nobody in particular and snapping: “Schooled”.

In the meantime, we will just have to wait for Ed Balls to finally crack and invite the Cabinet to “come outside and say that”.