Gordon Brown is finally a hit in America. Though perhaps not in the way he wanted. The PM has just appeared in an episode ofSouth Park as part of a posse of politicians who rob aliens to solve the recession. Never mind killing Kenny, this appearance may have killed any credibility he has in the USA. Assuming viewers even recognised him, given that he has a strangely cockney accent.

This is hardly the first time that someone in high office has appeared in a comedy show. And to be fair Gordon was an unwitting participant, which is more than can be said of previous interfaces between politics and comedy. His predecessor found time during the Iraq crisis in 2003 to do his own voiceover in The Simpsons. And Tony generously took a break from meddling in the Middle East to film a Comic Relief appearance with Catherine Tate in 2007. 

This cynical dallying with unofficial court jesters and becoming a laughing stock goes back much further of course. Neil Kinnock made a prize pillock of himself when he guested with Tracey Ullman in the video for her single My Guy in 1984. Kinnock played himself canvassing for votes but in reality probably lost more than he gained by getting on Top of The Pops. The record was pants too.

Trying to show that you have a sense of humour is never a vote-winner, but maybe the Labour Party does it a little better than the Tories. Margaret Thatcher had a bash at being down with the kids with a painfully staged cameo in a specially recorded Yes, Minister sketch in 1984. It was stilted and awkward and rather than humanise the PM it underlined her painfully profound lack of wit. 

Margaret Thatcher should have learnt her lesson from previous Tory leader Harold Macmillan, who tried to score a few credibility points with a visit to Beyond The Fringe at the Fortune Theatre in 1961. Unfortunately Peter Cook, then at the top of his satirical game, turned the tables with a bang-on Macmillan ad lib: ""When I've a spare evening, there's nothing I like better than to wander over to a theatre and sit there listening to a group of sappy, urgent, vibrant young satirists, with a stupid great grin spread all over my silly old face."

Perhaps the only politician to have got away with getting into a metaphorical bed with humourists has just passed away. Clement Freud somehow managed to combine a career in Westminster with regular stints on Just A Minute. But then he was  member of the Liberal Party, a political organisation long regarded by many as a joke.