Tomfoolery

Here's a challenge: try to think of some characters from Four Weddings and a Funeral and write down either the character name or the name of the actor or at least some distinguishing characteristic. Four or five should do.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

All done?

Now, take a look down your list and see if you have Tom, played by James Fleet. You may have described him as "upper class nitwit and brother to Kristin Scott Thomas's character, Fiona", although if so you would seem to have been taking this exercise more seriously than I anticipated.

What's that you say? Not at the top? Didn't really think so.

Now, to my point. Sordel believes that the very best that David Cameron can do in his entire career is to come away with a place in people's hearts as dear as James Fleet's Tom. That's it. It doesn't get any better. Cameron was never going to be the romantic lead of British Politics.

Tom is the quintessential example of the tolerable aristocrat. If someone were building a guillotine, his would be the last head in line for the basket, and by the time he arrived for execution he would have so won over the crowd that he would be set free with a gentle cuff of the ear.

Under the terms of their Hippocratic Oath, all would-be Toms fall under a strict enjoinder to "do no harm". They are also sternly admonished to keep well out of the way of trouble: something that Cameron has managed quite ably thus far, but "Golly ... bloody Thunderbolt City!" is still some way off.

If one is aiming to be Tom, the last thing one wants to do is to create the impression that your jacket is out at the elbows from brushing up against the likes of Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks.

Moreover, finding yourself on the other side of the issue to Hugh Grant, unlikely wielder of the Sword of Truth, is definitely a misstep.

The trouble with Tom is that really, deep down, the British Public has an instinctive hatred for him that only some clever mugging and a self-deprecating joke can attenuate. He who would be Fleet must first be fleet.

The News of the World scandal is Cameron's first real crisis, and it will be very interesting to see how he weathers it.