Only 43 per cent of the 922 quizzed said Labour would meet their borrowing targets. Fifty-eight per cent say the Tories WOULD hit the targets.

Former Peep Show producer Robert Popper is to join the writing team on South Park.

The British comedian – who also created BBC2 spoof science show Look Around You with Peter Serafinowicz – was signed up by creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker after spending a week with the team brainstorming ideas.

He will be working on the four remaining episodes of the current series out of Los Angeles.

He said: ‘I was delighted they asked me to join them for this run. It’s a dream come true. It’s a thrill to be in a room and hear Matt and Trey dip in and out of the South Park voices.’

The other writers currently working on the show are Vernon Chatman and Erica Rivinoja.

Meanwhile. Popper has just finished filming a BBC2 pilot with sketch duo Watson & Oliver, which he is producing, and a sitcom he has written for Channel 4, Friday Night Dinner, goes into production in the autumn, starring Simon Bird.

Popper was in the news last year after making a hoax call to a radio station, claiming Gordon Brown lost his temper during a factory visit, angrily throwing a tangerine into the machinery.

Ironically for a group so wedded to their hometown, the reparation of Massive Attack took place in in London. Marshall and Del Naja, who had been working separately on a fifth album, were reunited by an offer to curate the Meltdown Festival in 2008.

Having enticed heroes such as Grace Jones, George Clinton and Gang of Four to the South Bank, they decided to trash almost everything they had recorded. “It was missing that ‘together’ vibe,” Marshall says.

Fearing that a return to Bristol may herald a return to old tensions, they headed for the neutral ground of Damon Albarn’s 13 studios in West London.

“It was the first time we had worked together since Mezzanine,” Marshall says. “Damon said that we’d all do a song together. We didn’t know if he expected us to have any lyrics ready, so we gave him some and he looked at us, as if to say, ‘What are you doing? I shit lyrics.’ He wrote his part for Saturday Come Slow on the way into work.”

In language worthy of his most famous creation, Malcolm Tucker, The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci today called on the BBC to do more to defend itself from its critics – and “find someone to articulately tell James Murdoch to fuck off”.

Iannucci was speaking at the Broadcasting Press Guild awards, where his political satire won a hat-trick of awards. These included a first acting prize for the show for its star, Peter Capaldi, who plays Tucker.

The creator, writer, director and producer of the Thick Of It, Iannucci thanked the BBC for “holding its nerve over the series, especially when they have been under a lot of pressure over taste and decency and all sorts of things”.

“I love the BBC dearly and would fight for it to the death,” he said. “My only wish is that whenever it is accused of something, even if it’s something it hadn’t done, I wish it wouldn’t go to the first police station and hand itself in.

“Surely at the end of the day with all its skill and expertise and all the talent behind it and loyal following, it could find someone to articulately tell James Murdoch to fuck off.“

*Massive cheer.*

W. in Haiti, wiping the poor off his hand and onto Clinton’s shirt.