British media's take on Palin and tea party pretty much what you'd expect

And the odd thing is that although this is where she lives – in an impressive modern house on the edge of Lake Lucille with a plane on the lawn, a TV studio being built in her living room (she’s recently become a Fox News pundit) and a sour-faced security guard manning the silver-birch lined driveway – Sarah Palin is conspicuous by her absence.

Not just physically (‘She’s like Princess Di everywhere else, but she’s nowhere to be seen here,’ says Chris in the Mug Shot Saloon) but symbolically.

There are no hoardings, no flags, and no Palin-mania. In fact, it turns out that, other than the Mocha Moose, her old local coffee shop where owner Ben Harell has named a skinny latte after her, there’s not all that much support for Mrs Palin in her home state.

‘She upped and left,’ says Sally, 32, from Anchorage. ‘She jacked in her Governorship so she could make money.’

I phone one of my new Tea Bagger friends and run it by them.