Can't believe you said that? I share your pain, Mitt Romney Given that Mitt is a world-class businessman, who's spent half his life in a corporate jet, he's obviously not a moron. What he is, in fact, is a kindred spirit. Like me, he has the occasional (well, more than occasional) moment when the wires in your brain somehow get crossed, and you say something that seems entirely reasonable inside your skull, but leaves the rest of the room looking at you as if you're speaking Martian. "Gosh," you'll say to a colleague dolled up for a night out, "you look so nice, you could be a glamour model." "Wow!" you'll exclaim to a heavily pregnant friend. I'm surprised you even got through the door! The blessed thing about such moments - which for me, and seemingly for Mitt, usually come when reaching for a verbal flourish, a conversational grace note - is how quickly they fade from memory. My friends, when nervously canvassed, could remember many a time when neither they, nor I, could quite believe what I'd said. But the specifics proved elusive. When you're in politics, there's no such amnesia at work: every ill-judged sally is seized on. The best advice I've seen is to follow HS Hoff, author of the Joe Lunn books, and chant the acronym KYMS - "Keep your mouth shut" - whenever you're tempted to make an embarrassing contribution. The problem for Mitt, of course, is that it's hard to run for President through gritted teeth. Warnings of the death of the ice cream van - there are fewer than 500 left - have stoked gale-force nostalgia. What could be more British than jolly old Mr Whippy, saviour of a million holidays? Who doesn't hanker after a juicy Calippo, a delicious Chunky choc ice, or - best yet - that crisp cone filled with lovely aerated gloop (invented by a young Margaret Thatcher), topped with a stick of Flake? The trouble with nostalgia, however, is that the reality often fails to match up. Over the summer, a friend served up Viennetta for dinner, which we all remembered as the most delicious dessert ever devised. Then we actually tried it. It wasn't horrible: in fact, it was perfectly decent. But only if you'd never had Häagen-Dazs, or Ben & Jerry's. Then someone said that they'd recently tasted Ice Magic - the chocolate sauce that turned solid on contact with your slab of vanilla, to endless childhood amazement - and it had been thoroughly underwhelming. If one of the remaining ice cream vans chimes its way down the street, I'd answer its siren call - but I'm not sure I could bear it if a 99 left a sour taste, too. I know, as a journalist, I'm not supposed to say this, but I've always found Question Time unwatchable. Even when there are guests you want to listen to, they're swamped by braying boors and party-line parrots. But it's had a new lease of life since people started using Twitter to critique (read: insult) the pundits. So now the BBC's bringing in a series of guest stars as virtual "sixth panellists" to do the same. It seems like a weird idea. With the show being pre-recorded, there can't be any response on screen, so the Twitterer (using the account @bbcextraguest) will simply be snarking at the telly along with everyone else. More to the point, it shows a certain lack of confidence that the debate will be interesting in its own right - like running a director's commentary while the movie's still playing.