President Obama reveals his favourite character from The Wire...

While David Cameron and Ed Miliband faced a grilling from Jeremy Paxman, across the pond Barack Obama was enjoying a much more cosy chat with the writer of one of his favourite TV shows.

The President of the United States met David Simon, creator of HBO series The Wire, and admitted that shotgun-carrying, violent yet charismatic criminal Omar Little was his favourite character from the show.

"I'm a huge fan of The Wire," Obama said at the beginning of the interview, before going on to discuss the US war on drugs with Simon, a former Baltimore crime reporter.

Simon challenged the effectiveness of the country's drug policy, saying "what drugs don't destroy, the war against them is ripping apart."

Obama countered by saying that he had encouraged a more "productive way" of thinking about drug and law enforcement.

The president also paid tribute to the show itself, calling it “one of the greatest pieces of art in the last couple of decades," adding later, "Well, Omar is, by the way, my favourite character.

"But, part of what your show depicted though is also that there’s a generational element to this," he continued. "So you got entire generations of men being locked up. Which means entire generations of boys growing up either without a father or, if they see their dad, they see him in prison."