Nauseating Nadine, Idle Austin, Kind-Hearted Mark and Terribly-Nice Tim Loughton MP and shadow minister for children

Channel 4's Tower Block of Commons series, following four MPs as they live with people on some of the country's toughest council estates, was compelling viewing. Compelling because it flushed out how the MPs who were featured really are. This was no TV-editing hatchet job. Tory MP Nadine Dorris was consistently desparate-to-please. Labour veteran backbencher Austin Mitchell just sat around and sat around and sat around with his WIFE, for heavens sake, because he knew he couldn't surive on his own. Oh, he made a call to BBC local TV to cover the imminent closure of the Orchard Park youth club in Hull. Very good. That was the sum total of his endeavours. He appears to be under the employment of the Ministry of Silly Voices in his mature years. You'll know what I mean if you saw it.

By contrast, Mark Oaten was all caring and compassionate and really tried to help the people on their rotten estate in Dagenham. And Tim Loughton - the only one of the quartet I know personally - was really very much himself. He might have a cut-glass Home Counties accent but he seems to blend in naturally with people from all walks of life.

And he did achieve something there in Birmingham. He got a footie game together, he was taken by the Young Disciples youth project up there and invited its founder Jason Sylvester to speak at a Tory conference fringe event,  where BY THE WAY none other than the 'Digger', CYP Now' s very own Neil Puffett, was in attendance and on camera -  ladies and gentleman, we do not miss a trick at CYP Now, oh no. Although Loughton did also 'cut' a rap record. This did nothing for me, for my soul, I cannot look at it as a novelty, it's not even a case of  'it's so bad it's good'. No. To endure that blast of high-pitched cut-glass rapping, it was actually deeply physically upsetting. Good on him for trying though, just that I'd rather in future hear about it than hear it.

But Tim comes out of the whole thing very well. And the programme is a proper example in a rapidly diminishing pool of examples of public service broadcasting. It gives at least some small insight into how real people live.

Fellow Tory Nadine Norris showed her true colours by contrast to Tim as little more than an insecure careerist. She took a lad called Jonathan under her wing. Jonathan doesn't like the way David Cameron smirks, doesn't like what he stands for, he tells her. So after her spell on the estate in West Acton - which is by the way, nothing compared to the awful estate where she was brought up, these people don't know how lucky they are! - she takes Jonathan to the House of Commons, because of course it's the pinnacle of anyone's ambition (er, no Nadine, get over yourself). Then she foists the leader she so adores and admires, Dave Cameron himself onto a poor unsuspecting Jonathan. When Dave disappears after his cameo, Jonathan says he still isn't quite won over by him. Nadine looks crushed and dismayed - like, what else do I have to do to show you us Tories are good people, she's thinking.

That really wasn't the point of the programme Nadine. If you didn't get it after all that, you probably never will.