THIS may be the first time I’ve ever written this phrase, but I think David Cameron’s done the right thing in refusing to take part in a series of televised debates in the lead-up to May’s General Election.

Of course politicians should be accountable to the public and the more information available to voters before going to the polls the better.

But televised debates are not the way to do this.

Cast your mind back to those deathly boring debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010.

The only thing which made any lasting impression was Brown and Cameron jostling for the approval of the Lib Dem leader like two schoolboys suddenly finding themselves hanging out with the coolest kid in class and “I agree with Nick” briefly becoming a catchphrase among trendy liberal students.

That lasted long, didn’t it?

Apart from that the only thing I can remember – I did watch all three debates because I apparently had nothing better to do – was Cameron “casually” dropping mentions of his dead son in as often as he could. What a nice chap.

While various claims have been made over the actual impact the debates had – at least Nick Clegg enjoyed an extremely brief moment of popularity – no one with a degree of political awareness could have come away with any insight into what the three parties stood for.

And the end result was the same – the majority of political commentators said we were going to end up with a hung Parliament and, sure enough, that’s what happened. The Conservative-Lib Dem alliance was somewhat more surprising, but that’s another issue entirely.

So ultimately what’s the point of doing it again?

While involving the smaller parties might mix things up a bit, I don’t think I’m the first to say Nigel Farage is on TV more than enough as it is. Ultimately we’ll get the same old boring rhetoric from the same set of boring old men and come May 7 everyone is still going to vote for who they were going to vote for in the first place.

But then again maybe Cameron will crack under the pressure and declare war on Switzerland.

Now that would be worth watching.