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Nick Clegg has condemned the House of Commons for being "stuck in the past", and said people are put off politics by the "farce" of Prime Minister's Questions.

The Deputy Prime Minister made the comments as he appeared on a TV show during which he showed off his wife's cooking skills and drank tequila.

Mr Clegg insisted his party was right to "step up to the plate" to form the coalition Government in 2010, but admitted he had not been prepared for the "vitriolic" attacks against him since taking office.

He indicated that online voting could be a way to "move politics into the 21st century, because a lot of it is stuck in the 19th century".

The casually-dressed Liberal Democrat leader appeared on Channel 4's Sunday Brunch, helping hosts Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer cook an avocado cake. The party hoped to gain a boost from having Mr Clegg take part in a show which is not known for its political guests.

Asked about the weekly sessions of Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Clegg said: "I think the whole thing has become a complete farce."

He added: "It might have had its time once but this is a place where you can't call people by their name, you have to call them 'right honourable blah blah blah' or if they have a legal background you have to say 'right honourable, learned', if they are actually in the Army it's even worse, you have to say 'right honourable, learned, gallant'.

"It's just people... shouting at each other, it's a very concentrated, gladiator, sort of spectacle.

"There are some people who might like it, my own view is most normal people - and most normal people don't follow the ins and outs of politics - find the whole thing totally off-putting.

"This is a place, Westminster, where some of the pomp and ceremony is all right but some of it is just so out of date. This is a place which had a 19th-century shooting gallery but didn't have a creche until quite recently.

"That tells you everything you need to know about a place that is still, by my view, far too stuck in the past."

Defending the decision to form the coalition, he said: "You can, if you want, stand on the sidelines and throw stones and feel completely pure and you never have to take a difficult decision, you never have to face a difficult dilemma.

"I actually think if I had done that, if my party had done that, actually you would think 'are we ever going to step up to the plate or not?'.

"I personally think the history books will look back and realise that back then, back in 2010 after those debates and everything, people had to step up to the plate because we needed to clear stuff up."

Mr Clegg has faced a barrage of criticism, and his party has suffered in local and European elections, since 2010.

The Lib Dem leader said: "Politics at the end of the day is about the marriage of your ideals, which you have got to hold on to, but also practicality. Sometimes, frankly, they don't fit perfectly well together."

Asked if he had been ready for the attacks he faced in Government, Mr Clegg said: "It's like any job. You can't prepare for it completely until you start, until you actually do it.

"I absolutely knew that if the Liberal Democrats, for the first time in their history, either went in with Labour or the Conservatives you would really annoy a whole bunch of other people, by definition, because you have got this very polarised, pendulum swing politics - it's either the red team or the blue team and suddenly you've messed it up by the yellow team getting in there as well.

"Did I really imagine some of it would be quite as vitriolic? Perhaps not, but you can't spend all your life answering back to people who just want to insult you, you have just got to get on with the job, and that's what I try to do."

Mr Clegg brought in empanadas for the hosts and guests, although he acknowledged his Spanish wife Miriam had done most of the cooking.

"I assisted throughout," he said. "I brushed the thing with egg and chopped and diced."

In one of the more unusual questions he has faced on television, Mr Clegg was asked to reveal his favourite vinegar, with balsamic revealed as his condiment of choice.