Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a preening wassock strutting around a stage in Brighton attempting to be macho.

This was Ed Miliband's latest wheeze, pretending self-deprecation while at the same time aiming for bragging rights with one of the most nauseatingly smarmy anecdotes heard at a Labour conference since Blair last did his "second coming" shtick.

Miliband's ploy was so transparent that if you squinted you could see the script-writers beavering away behind the curtain like manic members of the Jim Henson workshop operating a particularly nondescript and awkward muppet.

It was supposed to be a slightly whimsical and warming retelling of an incident in which Miliband apparently helped someone up after they toppled off their bicycle. But, as with pretty much everything Miliband attempts, it merely came across as creepy.

"She said I was an action hero who mysteriously appeared out of nowhere," he smirked.

Now she knows how David Miliband felt.

He then bizarrely switched to the third person adding, "and she said Ed was actually attractive and not geeky at all."

Okay, several points here, first of all I think we may have divined the reason why the woman in question, Ella Phillips, fell off her bike in the first place...

Second, Miliband appears to have developed Napoleonic tendencies over the Summer. The only people who routinely refer to themselves in the third person are megalomaniacs and cretinous hip-hop stars - and that's only because they change their names so often it's the only way they can remember them.

And finally, and this is the clincher, if he really was an action hero he wouldn't be boasting about it. You can be cocky, sure, but it's more or less a prerequisite that in the face of either praise or condemnation the true hero remains taciturn and humble.

All in all not so much Die Hard, more like The Last Boy Scout.

At least he didn't strip down to his vest.

A thought occurs. Maybe the woman in question had received a blow to the head and what she actually meant was Action Man. He does have a weird plasticky complexion, looks like his pants are glued on, and then there are those shifty swivelling eyes...

As now appears to be de rigueur the oration was littered with pointless catchphrases and tokenistic tag-lines. Criticising Tory policy he blustered "We're Britain, we're better than that."

In fact he used variations on that particular gem several times. It was even worse than all that "one nation" rubbish they've been churning out for the last few months.

Posturing out of the way, he briefly turned to something which vaguely resembled a policy pledge.

Freezing energy prices must have seemed like a cast-iron vote-winner for the politician recently branded a "copper-bottomed shit" by a Downing Street "source" who sounded suspiciously like David Cameron.

However, even striking such a populist stance he bottled it. Promising to freeze prices is all well and good, although actually compelling the energy firms to do it is a different matter.

Announcing it almost two years in advance of a putative election victory, however, is like telling a dodgy property developer that you're planning to slap a preservation order on a building in six months' time and then being surprised when it suddenly falls down overnight.

That's Miliband and Labour's problem - they want to appear vaguely left-of-centre (when it suits them) but they are so slavishly in thrall to business that they can't bring themselves to do anything genuinely radical - like renationalisation.

Instead they tinker round the edges dealing in half measures.

The only real plus regarding Miliband's speech was that it really pissed off Peter Mandelson who was seen hovering around the fringes like Nosferatu at a blood bank. Surely they're not going to bring him back AGAIN are they?

I wouldn't put it past them.

Miliband's spiel was widely regarded as the highlight of the conference, which gives you some indication about how bad everyone else was.

That's like being voted least bad venereal disease, or saying that haemorrhoids are preferable to a rectal prolapse.

They're both still difficult to sit through.