HAVEN'T we done well on Merseyside in the last few days? In 24 hours between Friday and Saturday I had the pleasure (it's a figure of speech) of the company of Tory leader David Cameron, literal political heavy-hitter John Prescott, 'surreal' (a word without parity bar 'ironic' in the bastardised-language stakes) comedian and Europhile Eddie Izzard and former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. Now if that's not a 'smorgasbord', I don't know what is.

It's a while since I last saw Cameron. Well, not that long, actually. We were sick of the sight of each other by the end of the Crewe and Nantwich By-election last year, the Tories having thrown all their weight at that particular campaign. And a lot has happened since last May. Although the Conservative leader hasn't really given away much more as to what his party intends to do if elected to government, the world's economy has taken a further nosedive and Labour are looking like they're inches away from clinching a spectacular defeat at the next General Election with little help needed from anyone else.

But although Cameron was as quick to remind us of this as ever, Prescott and Izzard were having none of it. Pitching up beside his 'battle bus' (which is actually a battle mini-bus), Prezza managed to draw a small crowd, firstly the usual wave of 'Is that John Prescott-ers', who evolve into 'That's John Prescott-ers' before either dispersing or loitering around to listen, heckle or ... you never know ... throw eggs.

There were, unfortunately, no free-range shenanigans on his visit to Liverpool, although Prescott is a relatively shrewd operator who knows how to diffuse what could be an awkward question. Hence, before I could even get the word Chumbawumba out, he'd cracked a joke about the egging, the ensuing punch-up, the two Jags, the bucket of iced water. The only one he didn't give over to the realm of light entertainment was the bulimia. Oh, and the croquet, which a Scouser very helpfully reminded him of when he was in full campaign song.

Oh, the egg incident, winning what had to be the best response to any question ever given by Tony Blair. His appraisal: "John is John". Anyway, even if there had been no eggs, I'm sure as soon as he clocked that Welsh farmer's mullet he would have given him the Two Jabs treatment anyway.

Back in the city cntre, Izzard and Arlene McCarthy MEP, it has to be said, stood there looking like neither one of them knew why they, or the other one, was there. And after about twenty minutes of lukewarm campaigning, off they all went.

Ashdown, or 'Pantsdown', as legend has it a Fleet Street tea lady crowned him, was in town to sign copies of his book, 'A Fortunate Life'. Having not read it, I can't say hand on heart I know whose fortunate life it revolves around exactly.

He is a very human character, it has to be said. Likeable, even, which was not how one opinion poll would have had it in the run up to the 1997 General Election, when, by his own admission, an asterisk was placed above his name because pollsters had been unable to detect any support across the length and breadth of the country. With that as a starting point, it's fair to say he did rather well to draw the forty or so Lib Dems at Zelig's Italian restaurant in Liverpool One on Saturday.

But from this rollercoaster of excitement, there's one memory I will take away. On Friday afternoon, as Prescott and Izzard drew to a close and the crowd of sixty or so (made up in no small part by Labour supporters) had dispersed, I set off back to the office. About a hundred yards further down Church Street, just at the junction with Whitechapel, I saw a throng of what must have been upwards of 200 people stood around in a ring. Who could this be, I wondered, to draw such a crowd?

The answer could not have been better if I had made it up. There, stood at the centre, was a clown performing a clown routine, complete with big shoes, baggy pockets, the lot. And the crowd, oblivious to who had been standing at the other end of the street, were hooked.

Well, somebody did say the European elections were on.

ONE bright New Hampshire morning last year, in the grip of election fever, Merseyside man Carl Roper stepped up to the porch of an ordinary house in an ordinary street to canvas votes for Barack Obama.

After a knock at the door, a figure approached, opened the door and peered out through the netted fly screen at the stranger.

We're here to drum up support for Obama, can we rely on your vote, asked TUC project worker Carl.

The woman (or man, it happened more than once), would look back into the darkness of the house and, asked who they would vote for, gently nod or point towards the red and blue leaflets proclaiming Obama and the change you could believe in. This was, in a state whose motto "Live free or die", the vote that dare not speak its name,.

But in the end, the Obama vote found its voice and went on to defeat Republican John McCain in November's election. Yesterday, the world watched as the first ever African American man was sworn in as commander-in-chief of the West's biggest superpower. What was unthinkable forty years ago, let alone three hundred years ago, had been achieved.

Carl says he had been anxious in the run up to the election that despite the momentum of the Obama campaign, the Illinois senator could fall to the 'Bradley Effect'.

It's worth pointing out that the Bradley Effect has nothing to do with Liverpool's own leading man, Warren Bradley, and that there is absolutely no likelihood that Obama should himself embroiled in any Standards Board investigations in the immediate future.

And probably a good thing. The House of Representatives had managed to impeach Bill Clinton, and he had managed to get acquitted, in the time it's taken the Adjudication Panel to come back with a verdict on everyone's favourite fireman.

Joking aside, the term was coined following the 1982 California gubernorial campaign of black politician Tom Bradley, who days before the ballot enjoyed a significant lead.

However, when it came to it, his opponent George Deukmejian won. Voters, it seemed, no matter what they said in public, just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a black man.

Carl says, "There was always the chance the Bradley effect. It happened to us, where people on their doorsteps would not say they were voting for Obama. Clearly there were people in the house who thought they were going to vote for McCain.

"The worry was, when they got to the polling station, were they going to vote for Obama or not?

"I think in the end, he did better in some states than he would have expected."

So the Bradley Effect was almost working in reverse, with people feeling it was the expected thing to do to vote McCain while secretly harbouring support for Obama.

For Carl, now the deal is done and Obama has been safely inaugurated, the question is how the victory will influence political campaigning and, importantly, encourage more participation in politics in the UK at a time when people are becoming more and more apathetic and turn-outs are at record lows.

But Carl says the UK has already seen something of an Obama moment.

Carl adds, "The Obama campaign was not entirely dissimilar to the Labour victory in 1997, but there were a lot more people out there who may have regarded themselves as apolitical working on the campaign, certainly more than you would expect.

"A lot of people who would have regarded themselves as non-political got involved in the campaign, they had enthusiasm and wanted to make their mark."

And how far did the Obama campaign go towards involving black and ethnic minority votes?

"A majority of the people we were with were white Americans, but we want to a meeting when they were literally bringing in bus loads of trade unionists, and about eighty per cent of them were black.

"I spoke to a guy from New York and he said they were having to turn people away because there wasn't room for them all to sit down and do the campaign work.

"If you think he had around $600m dollars for his campaign and I think most of that came from small donations."

So, having been out there and seen first hand, are the people going to be disappointed? Let's face it, with the last eight years behind them they could be forgiven for looking for a miracle.

"I think there are going to be times when you're disappointed and things don't quite work out the way they would like.

"But people say they know there's going to be a reality check eventually, but they're going to relish living through what is a truly historic period.

"He managed to articulate hope and change but in language that was quite grounded and not hyperbole.

"Maybe sometimes we are too cynical. I've noticed people who are quite long in the tooth who have said they know there will be compromises along the way but let's enjoy it."

So, America has now raised the bar. We may have elected a female prime minister, but when we elect our first truly ethnic minority leader, only then will we know whether the freedom and opportunity that were the founding principles of the USA that left on the Mayflower ever sailed back to these shores.

Politicians are like buses. You wait for weeks for one to get back to you, and then dozens arrive at once. Gordon Brown and his troupe of ministers arrived in Liverpool on Wednesday to much ceremony and excitement, with his supporters hailing it all but the second coming, while the opposition ranks (the Lib Dems, made to feel like number two in their own manor) bemoaned the exorbitant cost of marshalling the event.

Of course, this is Gordon's second coming, in that sense, although there was nothing carnival-like about his last visit. Last time he came, in early September, he was in less than festive mood. The night before he was due to arrive, Charles Clarke, his former cabinet colleague, sounded off in the nationals and on the networks about the fact that Brown was practically a walking ghost with only months to live (or something like that, anyway). Even if most of us wrote it off as bitterness, Brown himself seemed to take it to heart, and his mood rippled through the droves of clipboard-wielding, ear-piece wearing hangers-on that descended on our fair city. Put it this way, should I as a journalist, trying to seek an answer, manhandle a politician, I would probably be felled by slugs of led. If some Central Office of Information PR-type were to grab my sleeve in order to stop me putting a question to the PM on behalf of the pubic (as happened last time), it would be a different matter. And it was.

So, awaiting the cabinet's arrival in the Pool, I nervously waited to see which disgruntled former colleague of his would put the mockers on the whole thing with some back-handed diagnosis of doom. But it never arrived, and when Gordon did, it all looked like passing off without incident.

That said, only those of privileged enough to be made to hang around outside in the freezing cold waiting for few words of wisdom from our elected representatives truly can appreciate the size of the circus that came to town this week. Anyone (the Lib Dems, that is) criticising the cost of policing the event should turn their attentions to the cost of getting the show on the road. You could be forgiven for thinking that the entire of Whitehall had boarded a train to come North on Wednesday, and with the ticket prices going up as they are, it'll have cost the public purse a pretty penny, no doubt.

Still, policing an event like this can't be a cheap affair. As I walked around the back of the Arena I saw three police horse boxes containing three long-faced horses, standing around kicking their heels and no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about. At what point, exactly, was the cavalry charge going to be necessary? This wasn't the G8, and wasn't likely to see mobs of regional development types quango-ing mad over the shortage of canapés turn it into a riot.

Then, in the middle of the river, to my surprise I should see a police boat. Now, what exactly a boat (manned by police or not) could do should anything happen, I don't know. It didn't look as though it was armed with cannon or 48-inch guns, and, maybe I'm being too casual, but the chances there were marauding Somali pirates ranging off the coast of New Brighton looking for an opportunity to nab the prime minister seemed slim to me, but you never can be too sure.

Still, this was a big spectacle, and it all added to the sense of occasion. Brown himself, whose popularity has somehow recovered since the arse fell out of the economy, seemed to be lapping it up. This was his chance to return to Liverpool at the close of its Capital of Culture year and bask in the glory of what has undoubtedly been a huge success. And that he did.

But, the question on many lips was, whose circus is this, anyway? Whispers from within the city's Lib Dem administration suggested there was some disquiet at the way the Culture year had been "hijacked" and turned into a "New-Labour love-in". Really? Or was that just sour grapes? In all honesty, seeing the Lib Dems on the regional news decrying the cost of the cabinet visit at the end of a year in which there have been more than enough complaints from their ranks about the way the government had not paid enough attention to the city put the whole thing at risk of ending not with a bang, but with a whimper.

One of the things that really seems to have stuck in the craw of the administration is the way in which certain figures have been elevated to almost messiah status during the course of the latter half of 2008. In fairness, Phil Redmond has done well to raise the profile of the celebrations, and has been the only Scouse celebrity to really muck in and get his hands dirty. Others may have shown their faces occasionally, played a few concerts or, handed doled out a few back-slaps, but Redmond has been the only one that has gone the course.

However, so arrives the conflict and consternation. From some within the city's political scene (and not just the ruling administration, I might add), there have been some quiet moans and groans about the way that the events of the last few days have focused on Redmond's contribution, perhaps at the cost to that of others. For some within the city leadership, not enough attention has been paid to the contribution of all those who made the year the success it was. When some complain to me that the government has overlooked the input of the hundreds if not thousands of city servants who have kept the machine oiled, what am I to say? Certainly yesterday at the Arena, there was no mention of the city council at all, and I found it hard to suppress the mirth when I saw the sour faces of the handful of city leaders who were invited.

What we can't afford now is for the year to end on a flat note. There was a time when no-one wanted to touch the Capital of Culture with a bargepole, when, before 2008, it looked on the brink of ending up an unparalleled disaster. But, against all the odds, it was turned around and went off without incident, although there were, it has to be said, a few casualties along the way (some of whom can now be found in the recesses of the internet spewing vitriol at their former employers).

Sure, the government wasn't overly-inclusive in terms of recognising the wider contribution, but the 2008 circus suffered a distinct lack of high profile names mucking in, painting their faces and putting on their big shoes. If the adulation a celebrity like Redmond received from the government has put some big red noses out of joint, when you look at what others have done and said, I suppose you've got to be thankful. Who can forget Ringo Starr's proclamation that he wouldn't live here again if it was the last place on earth, or something to that effect?

Putting all the petty party politics that have peppered 2008 aside, that the government turned up at all and now wants to set up a British Capital of Culture is a vindication in itself, whether it lays the credit at the door of the municipal buildings or 10 Brookside Close.

Now, with the Brown carnival back on the road, the big-top taken down and the lions and tigers back in their cages, the question ahead of the next time the government descends on Liverpool is what we as a city will have done in the mean time worth shouting about, not who will take the credit. 2008 is over, the next challenge is to come up with something bigger and better, so we don't end up looking like maudlin clowns holding wilted yellow roses the next time the Brown circus comes to town.