I was meant to be with Major at the Oval, but found myself in a basement (Andy Coulson "doesn't do daylight") listening to our esteemed Director of Communications and Planning delivering a lecture on "The Future". I might have been drinking Sancerre and watching Freddie and the boys give the Aussies what for. Instead, I was on tap water (bottled, apparently, damages the planet) and watching Coulson struggle with his PowerPoint. My bleat "But it's Sunday" drew the only laugh of a long, dry afternoon.

Enough of me - what of the future? Well, according to our DoCaP's first slide of his presentation, "The Future's Right and the Future's . . . Ours". With Coulson, however, there's always a caveat, and sure enough it arrived on slide two: "If We Learn to Embrace Twitter". For a moment, I assumed this, with its echoes of Blair's comment about the Labour Party and Mandelson, was the communication department's idea of a joke about Alan Duncan. It turned out to be no such thing (Coulson doesn't do jokes). What we must embrace is not my dear friend Alan, but my deadliest foe New Technology. According to Coulson, the Prescotts, father and son (yes, there is an heir. Son of Prescott: just when you thought it was safe to return to reading Hansard!), have stolen a march with their "incisive twittering" - his actual phrase.

A prime example of this appeared on slide three, which, according to Coulson's handout, consisted of the word "welovenhshashtag". This might strike our Director of Communications as incisive, but it remains utterly incomprehensible to me. All those "h's".

In considerably more time than it takes to run out a couple of Aussies, we finally moved to slide four: "Problem: the Tories are Email Politicians in a Twitter Age". Which, frankly, I found glib. We are principled politicians or we are nothing. Email is a distraction. Rather than point this out I exited the room and, with considerable difficulty, the building, escaping into the fresh air to enjoy a medium-sized cigar.

When I returned, the DoCaP was revealing slide five: "Answer: Appoint a Technology and Information Zar" (Coulson evidently doesn't do silent c's either). According to Andy, the ideal candidate to be the TiZ, as he called him, or the TiC, as you or I would call him, would have a background in the established media, perhaps with one of the Murdoch papers, but also have a thorough understanding of, or preferably gift for, new media.

There was a pause as Andy waited for comments from the room. And then it was on to slide six: "Who Ticks All the Boxes?" Underneath, as an aide memoire, was a list of those boxes in full. You hardly needed to be Doris Stokes to see the way this one was going. In the absence of plausible competition, the man who ticked all the boxes was, as slide seven revealed, none other than the Director of Communications and Planning himself. At a time when those who wish to serve in the cabinet have been asked to relinquish all other jobs, the DoCaP has added TiC to his portfolio. And in the process looks set fair to earn more than chancellor of the Exchequer and the foreign and home secretaries combined. Which doesn't seem at all right.

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