The Daily Mirror's anti-Tory tactical voting guide today caused a stir, not least because it(unintentionally) coincided with Ed Balls and Peter Hain dropping heavy hints for electors to use their heads as well as hearts to keep out Cameron.

As the leader in the paper made clear, the Mirror hasn't abandoned Labour but recognises that in some seats the Liberal Democrats are in a better position to fend off-defeat the Cons while appealing for Lib Dems to back Labour in others.

Media commentator Roy Greenslade wrongly claimed in Liberal Democrat News The Guardian that it was the first time the Mirror has done this. This is the Mirror 2005 tactical voting guide. Another was published at the 2001 election and one before that in 1997, although I couldn't find them on a quick search of the net. So tactical voting is a Mirror tradition.

Eric Pickles has a short fuse behind that jovial Tory chairman facade. Maybe it's because his complacency has caught up with him, the days long gone when he'd let me know he thought the election was in the bag. Told you it would be close, Eric.

And perhaps that's why he almost snapped on a campaign visit to Essex. I've just caught up with this. Challenged by a voter(polite and reasonable) if an MP was an overpaid solicitor or an underpaid social worker, prickly Pickles answered: "Both and he has to put up with folks like you..." before recovering with an "...and it is lovely to see you."

If only Pickles had worn a radio mic when he jumped in his car he might have done a Brown.

Back by popular Demand: The Dribbler online footie mag has a new Cammy and Oiky strip for those, including a fair few Conservatives of my acquaintance, who feel other than deference towards Dave and George.

Squirmingly funny. If you've not caught up elsewhere with Jon Stewart Mocks the Laughable Tameness of British Political Scandals, it's here.

The subtitles on Gillian Duffy are cheeky but Brown did look like a crash test dummy when the tape was played back. I'll not forget the look of utter shock on Mrs D's face before she blurts out "You're joking" when told of the the PM's bigoted remark, her quiet satisfaction at the encounter replaced by horror.

Stewart makes an error, however, by referring to "Labour stronghold Rochdale". It's a Liberal Democrat seat which this week famously lost a Labour voter.

A naughty Conservative Parliamentary wannabe is accused of using his council responsibilities to promote his private business interests. Scott Seaman-Digby displayed the logos of Hillingdon Borough Council and marriage guidance organisation Relate on his firm's website. Seaman-Digby, who doubles up as the local authority's cabinet member responsible for corporate services and the boss of procurement consultancy Hawtrey Dene, likes to pose as a key David Cameron adviser. Hmmm...

Anyway, as part of his council duties, he's a trustee of the local branch of Relate. Yet both the council and the charity say he had no permission to use their logos. Seaman-Digby denied any conflict of interest and told my friend Dave Osler there had been a "misunderstanding", both concerns benefiting from his professional procurement experience free of charge. The logos disappeared after super sleuth Osler began sniffing around but the sleuth has a printout of the old site with them up.

Seaman-Digby is standing in Hayes and Harlington against Labour's John McDonnell who was one of the most independent, hardworking and refreshingly unspun MPs in the last Parliament.

The Tories are quick to point the finger at any Labour figure accused of the most minor transgression. So the party shouldn't moan that a former Labour councillor, Anthony Way, plans to lodge a formal complaint with the local council's standards board. "These extraordinary allegations need to be fully investigated," says Way, "and if they are true, Scott should stand down." I'll keep you posted.

How it works? I hear Bell Pottinger, the PR firm headed by Maggie Thatcher's favourite spinner Lord Bell, a Tory peer, is offering to sell Gillian Duffy to Conservative supporting newspapers. I'm unsure how Bell Pottinger got involved. Maybe it touts for businesses.

The Daily Mail and The Sun are interested and a sum "in high five figures", said to be £75,000, has been mentioned. Maybe Mrs Duffy will bite, maybe she won't. If she does, brace yourself for a Tory-tainted tale of that 40-minute meeting with the Prime Minister in her Rochdale front room. The Conservatives can claim to be aloof when their friends are willing to do David Cameron's dirty work.

One senior Bell Pottinger has already published an exotic account of today's extraordinary events.

Election blunders don't come much more spectacular than Gordon Brown's "bigot" dig in private at Gillian Duffy after he'd had a friendly chat with the lifelong Labour supporter in public, the pair smiling and shaking hands with the PM even asking after her grandkids.

"You never want a serious crisis," said Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, " to go to waste." Hmmm...it's hard to see the upside of this one. We won't know if Brown's Kinnock Sheffield moment until after May 6, though it's a free gift to the PM's opponents. David Cameron and Nick Clegg will have muttered thoughts they wouldn't want broadcast but they haven't been caught. Brown has so it's Labour's mega problem.

Brown detests prejudice yet Mrs Duffy looks and sounds like the wrong target and he came across as bigoted himself. I suspect we won't again hear Labour camera on-camera off jibes(justified in my opinion) that Cameron says one thing in public and another in private.

I've willed candidates to savage voters making poisonous comments on the campaign trail and they've instead moved on, not wanting to offend an elector. But Mrs D isn't in that category. The unreserved apologies are the only option, Brown looking crestfallen in the radio studio may help a little(Incidentally he didn't, as I've heard claimed, his head in his hands. Brown had one hand on his head which, as Adam Boulton pointed out, is a relaxed radio pose) because he appears genuine.

Conspiracy theorists are already claiming a Murdoch plot because Sky, whose mic was on Brown, is a stablemate of The Sun. That's nonsense. I bet ITV and probably even the BBC would've used the recording. That no one thought to take the mic off, however, is another sign of Labour's badly run campaign.

Brown needed a big performance in tomorrow's TV leadership debate. Well it just got a lot bigger. A Labour candidate rang to say the only positive he could see is it happened today and not yesterday or the day before. Most of the postal votes, he said with a grim laugh, have already been cast. The words "clutching" and "straws" spring to mind.

I wonder who Cammy and Oiky could be in this comic strip(press "click to view the strip") in The Dribbler. The blue rosettes may be a clue. David Cameron and George Osborne?

After giggling I remembered Cameron's supposed to be an Aston Villa fan. His uncle was, of course, chairman.

Got any election cartoon links to share? I'm still enjoying this.

Nick Clegg gets a rough ride in the Tory supporting papers today. Nothing fatal but he'll be a little bruised. There's probably worse to come. Welcome to the big time, Mr Lib Dem leader. The Conservative-leaning titles have always been particularly scornful of the Lib Dems and have invested too much personal and political capital in David Cameron to surrender meekly. The touchiness on the Right of the media was behind yesterday's extraordinary visit by James Murdoch and Rebekah Wade(I Tweeted on it last night as @Kevin_Maguire) to the Independent's HQ to berate Simon Kelner about anti-Murdoch ads run by his relaunched paper, ads saying the election won't be decided by Murdoch who wants io perpetuate the myth that it's the Sun wot won it. A Tory frontbencher told me even he thought it a bit rich that publishers of papers that dish it out day-in-day-out moan when a little comes back their way!

I'm off to Wales before heading to Bristol for tonight's round two of three in the TV debates. Clegg needs to show he's no week-long flash in the pan, Cameron that he's better than last Thursday while Brown must put Labour's case instead of agreeing with Nick. Labour's lucky the Cons are wobbling and the Lib Dems' flying(or were until today) because the party's campaign is tired, lacking zest. For some reason Brown's surrendered fairness to Clegg. I've written and broadcast my personal frustration on numerous occasions at Labour trembling over NICs - and foolishly refused to rule out a VAT hike - when Fat Cats hissed instead of biting back. An egg-chucking idiot's landed a more direct blow on Cameron than the party. Where is the sense in Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper and other Labour women remaining locked in an attic. It's stupidity when the Tories are a boys' club.

An increasing number of Cabinet Ministers privately wonder what's going on in Labour's campaign. You don't have to speak to them very long to hear the grumbles. Some are so frustrated at the lacklustre operation they're coming up with conspiracy theories. I've even heard speculation it's a covert attempt to win David Miliband the Labour leadership after May 6, Victoria Street's putting him so often on the telly when Alan Johnson's a better performer!

It's fair to say the unlikely figure of campaign chief Peter Mandelson's emerged as one of Labour's best communicators. The peer without a vote in this election - the irony of it! - skilfully chairs Labour press conferences. When they're held. He was awesome after the first TV debate in Manchester, spinning like a top, reducing Tories such as George Osborne to the role of open-mouthed onlookers. Yet it feels as if Mandelson's fighting a cautious, safety-first 2001 campaign when in 2010 a Labour Party second or third in the polls needs to take risks. Labour must be bolder, to make a positive case for votes. Relying on Tory turmoil and Clegg continuing to puff air into a Lib Dem balloon isn't a strategy. It's a hope.

Heckling is acceptable but this is not. I'm relieved, however, the chicken came before the egg or we might never have seen the chicken.