Good looks count for more than class or race

I f anyone wants to make a mark in life today, it is all-important to be born with an appearance or manner that is attractive to television. That is why all those snide comments suggesting that the white, middle-class McCanns would not have received so much sympathetic media attention if they had been black and working class are so out of date.

Had the McCanns been a black, working-class couple with the eye-catching dignity and grace of, say, the black working-class parents of Stephen Lawrence, the media interest would have been equally frenzied. Of course, class and race still count for something, but increasingly the most valuable prize in the lottery of life is to be born with the kind of looks which the camera loves to dwell upon.

To begin with, David Cameron also had what it takes. But his

The most valuable prize in life is to be born with looks which the camera loves

telegenicity - always tenuous - has begun to fade. I know the pundits put his slump in the polls down to a multiplicity of political factors, but in my experience it is because his blandness has begun to be a television turn-off.

That is true of most politicians. No gathering could be less telegenic than the House of Commons. Letting the cameras in was a great mistake since not all the deceptive wiles of a BBC producer can disguise the irrelevance of Parliament in the television age. TV interviewers like Jeremy Paxman, who are part and parcel of the TV age, are now the new tribunes of the people.

None of this, I repeat, has much to do with class, gender or race. The McCann phenomenon, curse or blessing, is due to their telegenicity and as long as that lasts the camera - forget about the police - will never let go.