All hail the human face of the coalition: Nick Clegg sad-eyed defender of the new reality

Cleggsy Bear shuffles on stage to say each unpleasant new announcement was the fairest decision taken in our lifetimes
In these uncertain, unsettling times, with unpopular policies being implemented by a patchwork coalition of the damned, Nick Clegg is proving to be perhaps the most useful tool in the government's shed. Not because he says or does anything particularly inspiring, but because he functions as a universal disappointment sponge for disenchanted voters. You stare at Nick Clegg and feel infinitely unhappy, scarcely noticing Cameron and co hiding behind him. Governments around the world must be studying the coalition and working out how to get their own Clegg. He's the coalition's very own Pudsey Bear: a cuddly-but-tragic mascot representing the acceptable face of abuse. But unlike Pudsey, he actually speaks. Immediately following each unpleasant new announcement, Cleggsy Bear shuffles on stage to defend it, working his sad eyes and boyish face as he morosely explains why the decision was inevitable and not just inevitable, but fair; in fact possibly the fairest, most reasonable decision to have been taken in our lifetimes, no matter how loudly people scream to the contrary. It's hard not to detect an air of crushed self-delusion about all this. At times Clegg sounds like a once-respected stage actor who's taken the Hollywood dollar and now finds himself sitting at a press junket, patiently telling a reporter that while, yes, on the face of it, his role as the Fartmonster in Guff Ditch III: Fartmonster's Revenge may look like a cultural step down from his previous work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, if you look beyond all the scenes of topless women being dissolved by clouds of acrid methane, the Guff Ditch trilogy actually contains more intellectual sustenance than King Lear, and that all the critics who've seen the film and are loudly claiming otherwise are misguided, partisan naysayers hell- bent on cynically misleading the public which is ethically wrong. It's only a matter of time before the word "Clegg" enters the dictionary as a noun meaning "agonised, doe-eyed apologist". Or maybe it'll become a verb.

Years from now, teachers will ask their pupils to stop "clegging on" about how the dog ate their homework and just bloody hand it in on time. Clegg's most recent act of clegging was to explain to this newspaper that the Institute of Fiscal Studies was wrong to brand the spending review "unfair". "I think you have to call a spade a spade," he clegged, immediately before demonstrating his commitment to straightforward language by querying the definition of the word "fair". The previous administration's simplistic "culture of how you measure fairness", was partly to blame for the Institute's foolishness, clegged Clegg in a cleggish tone of voice. In previous years, "fairness was seen through one prism and one prism only". It turns out fairness is actually more complex and slightly less fair than that. According to Clegg it's important to call a spade a spade, unless you've mistaken the spade for a digging implement, which it isn't. A spade is a kind of towel. Point a camera in his direction, and Clegg will construct an earnest argument in favour of virtually any unappealing concept you can throw at him. Such as the following: On drink-driving "No one likes car crashes. But to imply that drinking somehow impairs one's ability to control a vehicle is just scaremongering and it's precisely this sort of jittery overreaction that causes most accidents in the first place. The simple fact is that only by calming our minds with alcohol can we keep a steady hand on the tiller."

On the coalition's decision to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on Berwick- upon-Tweed "Yes it's extreme, but something has to be done. Berwick-upon-Tweed simply can't be allowed to continue as it is. But the blast won't be as far-reaching as the opposition and the scientists and the UN are saying. If you live in, say, Truro, it probably won't make much difference to your day-to-day life, provided you're reasonably self-sufficient and don't mind the odd hand-tohand skirmish with mutants."

On being the middle segment of a "human centipede" "I've heard a lot of people say, "urgh, Nick, have you seen that film The Human Centipede, where the mad scientist joins three people together by stitching them rectum-to-mouth? Can you imagine how disgusting that'd be in real life?" And I can see how they might leap to that conclusion. But real life is about compromise sometimes we simply have to swallow a few unpleasant things in the name of pragmatism. In many ways, the coalition is a human centipede a group of united individuals, all pulling together in one direction and let me tell you, from the inside, it's surprisingly cosy."

On cutting off his nose to spite his face "Before the election, I made a solemn pledge to leave my nose intact. I even printed that pledge out, signed it, and posed for photos while holding it up and smiling like I meant it. So I can understand people's disquiet over this. It's something I've wrestled with personally. But nonetheless, off it goes. Cutty cutty nose time! Tee hee! Hoo hoo! Chop, chop, chop!"

Next week: Clegg defends his decision to force the Chilean miners back underground, claims 2 Unlimited were better than the Beatles, and explains why the coalition's proposed oxygen-rationing scheme will usher in an age of peace and prosperity for all.