A PRETZEL, a sign reading "mission accomplished" and an adviser by the name of Turd Blossom. As Powell said, all political careers end in failure. After watching W, Oliver Stone's dissection of the Bush years which had its European premiere at the London Film Festival this week, it might be politic to add humiliation to the list.

Make that partial humiliation and quasi rehabilitation. A funny thing has happened to some viewers of Stone's picture, released here on November 7. Even though it hammers Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove (aka Turd Blossom to his boss) over Iraq, it looks behind the caricature that the 43rd President has become.

In doing so, the film makes you question whether Bush was truly the worst president ever to have sat his sorry backside in the Oval Office, or whether he was the victim of events that would have defeated many another. Mad, bad and dangerous to know or a sad inadequate trying to do his best?

As he points his cowboy boots towards the exit, Bush is now not so much a lame-duck president as a comatose one. When the Brit comedian, Russell Brand, can call the US President "a retarded cowboy" on television, and more Americans laugh than complain, it's time to say goodnight, Gracie. Yet on Bush must slog till the inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2009, when the president-elect, whoever that will be, becomes the president proper. These must be the longest of days in the White House. For a man who spent most of his life failing to live up to his father's expectations, to be limping out of office without even a sniff of a legacy must hurt.

Stone's W does make Bush Jr seem more human by focusing on his early lost years, but by highlighting his flaws - impulsiveness, arrogance and weakness chief among them - it confirms that he was the worst person to have in office at the most critical of times.

Throughout his life, Bush was blessed with choices and chances. Just when he had begun to make the right ones, along came 9/11 to present him with the ultimate test, and he flunked it. Without 9/11, the Bush years might have been the Quayle presidency made real, a minor farce played on a grand stage. With 9/11, and the choice he made to invade Iraq to try to finish what daddy started, his presidency became a tragedy. He can at least walk away from it, and live the post-presidential life of libraries and after-dinner speeches. The casualties, who never had much in the way of chances or choices, cannot.

HOW Kerry Katona, queen of Iceland (food stores division, but could have been the banks as well), managed to get before the cameras and royally embarrass herself on This Morning is a mystery. Live television, meant to be so spontaneous, is run by control freaks who live in terror of the unexpected happening. There must have been many points at which Katona could have been stopped from going on set, but, like George Best before her, there she was. An accident, or a chance to boost the ratings and grab some headlines for the show? Over to you Phil and Fern.

STILL in exile, and making the most of what London has to offer, not least the chance to wonder, yet again, how so many Scots end up on the streets here in such sorry states. Since the reality - poverty, illness, horrific childhoods - is so depressing, I like to think they are part of a Rada experiment that went wrong. Years ago, the London tourist authorities, in a bid to add some colour to the UK capital, must have hired a troupe of resting actors to impersonate drunken Scots. Instead of quietly disappearing when the gig was over, they stuck around, bred among themselves and are now the large community you see hanging around train stations today. Today destitution, tomorrow, the National Theatre.

Another way to keep your spirits up down here is to hand Scottish bank notes to bewildered shopkeepers. As every traveller knows, these are usually given the same warm welcome as scribbled notes that read: "Open the till and give me the money." I used to become embarrassed at the kerfuffle; now I just explain that I was up all night colouring the bits of scrap paper in and the least they can do is give me goods in exchange.

SO much fuss about those 45 cats that have gone missing in Wollaston, West Midlands, dubbed the "Purr-muda Triangle" by locals. What's the betting some old dear in a neighbouring borough has a job lot of sardines in tomato sauce?