Budget 2012 sketch: George Osborne takes a battering at breakfast In the Commons, George Osborne is generally very good at defending himself - or, at any rate, attacking whoever has had the temerity to question him. In TV and radio studios, however, he seems ill at ease. Perhaps the problem is that you can't insult interviewers the way you can insult the Opposition. When Kate Garraway of ITV1"s Daybreak accuses you of ignoring the plight of low-income families you can't rear up and snap, "Well, Mr Viewer, maybe we wouldn't be having to take these difficult decisions if the breakfast TV host opposite hadn't spent 13 years bringing the country to its knees with her reckless borrowing!" All the same, the Chancellor might have tried to justify his Budget with a bit more spirit. Instead he seemed huffy, particularly on the Today programme. Almost every time Evan Davis asked a question, in the background you could make out the sort of impatient sighing and puffing you might expect from a spoilt child who isn't used to being told off, especially not by a stranger. ("Mum-meeeee! The nasty man from the BBC's being horrid about my refusal to increase the tax allowance for the over-65s!") An advantage of being interrogated on the radio is that the public can't see your face. "Do you want to be known as the Chancellor who took on the grannies?" demanded Kate Garraway on Daybreak. Mr Osborne's eyes darted from side to side, as if searching desperately for a means of escape. A few minutes later she quoted one of David Cameron's former speechwriters, who had said that cutting the 50p tax rate was "a basic blunder that sends a missile into six years of Tory modernisation." It would not be true to say that the colour drained from Mr Osborne's face - even at the best of times he's as pale as a bedridden aunt - but his glare was ferocious. He looked like an indignant rice pudding. Over in the Commons, debate over the Budget continued. Labour MPs had spent a very enjoyable evening working on their jokes, and were proud to present them to the House. Angela Eagle, MP for Wallasey, recalled the Chancellor's claim that we were "all in it together." "I scoured the Oxford English Dictionary," she mewed delightedly, "and couldn't find a definition of "all" that excluded the top one per cent." Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) said that the next time he went to the barber he wouldn't ask for his hair to be cut but "simplified." Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, looked even more pleased with his own effort. "The Chancellor is not Robin Hood," he barked, "he's the Sheriff of Nottingham - and as for jobs and growth, he couldn't give a Friar Tuck!" MPs gazed in wonderment. Why was this man wasting his talents in the Commons when he could be writing headlines for The Sun?