David Cameron: Basil Fawlty Moment Flicks Zee Vee to Merkel?

Did Dave Cameron really do a Gestapo accent in Norwich? Sheesh! Not satisfied with winding up Sarkozy (hat tip: Sunder on Twitter) he's after zee Merkel heil! Over to the Daily Mail (!):

Adopting an exaggerated German accent, he asked the crowd 'Where are your papers?'
The joke was supposed to be a comment on the draconian nature of the ID card scheme.
But it drew gasps from listening voters at the question and answer session in Norwich, and did not quite yield the response he was going for.
Critics fear it could even trigger an embarrassing diplomatic row between the would-be Prime Minister and Germany.
A woman in the audience raised her hand and asked him: 'I wonder about the wisdom of you adopting a German accent?'
Mr Cameron's patronising response was worthy of the notoriously offensive hotel boss in the 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers - in the iconic scene where he addresses German guests - explaining to her: 'It was meant to be light-hearted.'
... Voters in Norwich put him in further hot water by criticising Mr Cameron's decision to align the Conservatives with a right-wing Polish party in the European Union, which he believes shares common values with the Tories.

UPDATE 12:49: South Shields' hottest political blogger Curly can now eat his words. Here's some more from The Mail:

Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat's Shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: 'This might just be dismissed as a tasteless joke if David Cameron were not trying to form a group in the European parliament with parties containing Nazi sympathisers.
'Cameron has sacked Conservative spokesman for comments just as crass and yet he expects us to consider him fit for number 10. The Tory leader is becoming increasingly gaffe-prone.'
Norman Baker, MP for Lewes said: 'It is not very edifying for the Conservative party leader to be impersonating Basil Fawlty. It could cause a diplomatic rift, and for the duration of the Norwich by-election it will be 'don't mention the gaffe'.'
Stephen Pound, Labour backbencher and MP for Ealing North, said: 'I thought we'd said goodbye to 'Allo, Allo', if that's the level of debate.
'National security is a very serious matter, not an opportunity to make jokes that were stale 50 years ago.'
No one at the German Embassy in London was available for comment last night.