WELL, thank God that’s over. Finally, the media circus has drawn to a close and the polls can get back to more traditional forms of electioneering — false promises, mendacity and back-biting.

The last time this many nefarious and untelegenic individuals were paraded across our screens was the Nuremberg trials, and there was as little truth told then too.

Thursday night saw the final leaders’ debate, with Cameron, Clegg and Miliband ta king to Question Time, broadcast from Leeds, in a last desperate bid to bolster their vote.

It was always going to be a tough gig to finish on, staged as it was in a county justly proud of its reputation for straight talking, speaking its mind and general gleeful belligerence.

As the old phrase goes, you can always tell Yorkshire folk, you just can’t tell them much.

As a benchmark of the party leaders’ ability to fake sincerity, this was something of an acid test.

Snap polls suggested Cameron came out on top but he didn’t get it all his own way, with the studio audience demanding answers about Conservative plans to cut welfare.

The Tory leader rejected suggestions he was planning to slash £8 billion from child benefit and child tax credit, but it didn’t appear to cut much ice with the majority of punters.

Cameron just has one of those faces, simultaneously irresistibly punchable and totally untrustworthy. He only ever tells the truth by accident, as he did again the day after the debate when he described the election as a “career-defining” moment before swiftly claiming he meant “country-defining.”

Miliband upped his game for the last leg, but then he’s had enough practice by now.

He said he did not accept that the last Labour government overspent while in office and promised the party was “absolutely, deadly serious” about balancing the books in the next parliament.

But then you would hardly expect him to say that his key election pledge was one of unchecked profligacy.

Clegg went through the motions, but you could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. More and more, he is looking like a man cast adrift on a life raft who has just discovered it’s riddled with woodworm.

At one point, it looked like he was going to break down in tears. As, to be fair, did some of the audience.