One of Steve Norris's manifesto commitments for the London mayoral election is to ensure a frequent, reliable bus service. Yesterday his Tory blue battle bus let him down.
The hustings meeting at north London's Alexandra Palace was supposed to begin at 3 p.m. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Susan Kramer, arrived by car. Ken Livingstone took the Tube and a taxi and Darren Johnson from the Green Party walked to the meeting. Frank Dobson couldn't make it (cheers from the public) so he sent a Labour Assembly candidate. But poor Mr Norris was nowhere to be seen.
His battle bus was stuck in traffic between Kingston and north London. That went down well with Londoners used to battling with the traffic.
So the hustings meeting got down to business without Mr Norris anyway. Nobody seemed to mind that, while the candidates from the main parties and five fringe candidates gave their opening statements, Mr Norris's chair was empty. The empty chair syndrome was like last week's Manchester United press conference, when the club planned to unveil their £18.5 million signing and everyone was there except Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Meg, the Labour Assembly candidate, did quite well in the circumstances. The Alexandra Palace crowd was quite a noisy bunch and heckled the poor woman almost from the moment she stood in front of the microphone, but she made a brave attempt at criticising all the other candidates. "Livingstone is campaigning for Livingstone," she said. "Kramer wants to run it all for herself and Norris is distancing himself more and more from the Conservatives. But we are running a team effort." After three minutes berating the other candidates' policies, Meg sat down. There were no claps or cheers from the audience.
Ken was vintage Ken. The crowd loved him and he gave a little speech about congestion charges and how Labour was playing "silly party politics" by opposing his transport policy. After Ken had finished, a man called Damien stood up. He told the audience that if they voted for him on Thursday the first thing he would do would be to scrap the entire London Assembly and start again. Not a wholly constructive policy, but at least he got a few laughs.
Someone from the back of the audience then shouted out what most people were thinking. "Who are you?" the heckler demanded. "I'm from the UK Independence Party," said Damien. "We're the fourth-largest party in Britain." Another heckler kindly informed Damien he shouldn't have bothered turning up.
Just as it seemed Mr Norris was going to be a no-show, there was a flurry of activity at the side of the stage and in he walked. Well, schmoozed really. He waved and he smiled and chatted with Ken and all was forgiven that he was nearly an hour late.
Mr Norris was at home with the Alexandra Palace audience. He has made a point during his mayoral election campaign of distancing himself from Conservative Central Office. He runs his campaign his way and he doesn't mind poking fun at the party. "I came by bus," he told the audience. "It's my bus. I mean, if you want a bus you go out and buy a bus, don't you? I'm having it all ways, typical Tories."
The audience lapped it up. And Mr Norris was soon making jokes about driving around London in his car. "I mean, I want to reduce car usage but you use the most convenient form of transport available. All these brown rice and open-toed sandals people talking about transport and saying `I walked to this meeting, or I took the bus'. Frankly, if you stood within a yard of them you could tell."
Mr Norris sat down and Ken leant over to him and whispered something in his ear. The two men looked quite cosy up there on the stage. If Mr Norris plays his cards right, it could soon be the Ken and Steve show.