国际英语新闻：British party leaders hold historic live TV debate

The format for the debates was thrashed out in talks between the three parties and the three main broadcasters - ITV, Sky and the BBC. The last one of the 76 agreed rules was "at the end of the debate all three leaders will shake hands with each other" to avoid the embarrassment of one snubbing another.

Leaders were asked questions by members of the 200-strong audience of voters, and had one minute each to answer, and then an opportunity to comment on what the other leaders had said before going into a free-flowing debate on each subject for several minutes.

Brown focused many of his attacks on Cameron, aggressively asking for responses on policy.

Pressing Cameron on police funding Brown landed his first bloody punch. "This is answer time, not question time," quipped Brown, in reference to the two men's weekly jousting in the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Question Time.

Cameron pushed the Conservative manifesto line of stamping out waste and making government more efficient.

Clegg, the leader of the third and smallest party, concentrated on pushing his manifesto promises and on belittling the other two parties, "The more they attack each other, the more they sound exactly the same" he said in what looked like a well-practiced response.

The trio debated nine issues including immigration, police, the expenses scandal, education, the economy, the armed forces, health and care for the elderly.

The central debate was on the economy. Brown launched an all-out attack on the Conservatives' vow to cut the huge annual public debt quickly, which currently stands at 167 billion pounds (about 225 billion U.S. dollars). "I fear for the economy, the risk of the economy is this year, pull out the growth and you will have fewer jobs," he said.

Cameron, pushed home his manifesto commitment to cut waste, citing 1 billion pounds (about 1.5 billion U.S. dollars) spent by civil servants on entertainment, and pay rises of 7 percent (many private sector workers had no pay rise because of the recession) for high-salaried bosses in the National Health Service.