Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg faced ridicule in the Commons yesterday following his party's election humiliation at the hands of the Bus Pass Elvis Party.

The joke Elvis party came fourth with 67 votes in a Nottingham City Council by-election last week, ahead of the Lib Dem candidate, who was bottom of the poll with just 56 votes.

Laughter broke out in the Commons when Labour MP Kevin Brennan suggested that the electorate's message to the Tory-friendly Lib Dems could be described by paraphrasing a famous Elvis Presley song as "you ain't nothing but a lap dog."

Nottingham South MP Lilian Greenwood also stuck the knife in as Mr Clegg deputised for David Cameron at Prime Minister's question time.

"Last week my constituents in Clifton North elected a new Labour councillor," she said.

"Does the Deputy Prime Minister think it was his party's support for the bedroom tax, the trebling of tuition fees, unfair cuts to the poorest families or their betrayal of the NHS which led them to put Bus Pass Elvis ahead of the Lib Dems?"

A flustered Mr Clegg attempted to make light of the by-election result by jocularly describing the intervention of the Elvis party as "a novel experience."

But he snapped back at Labour MPs that at least the Lib Dems were not "the lap dog of the banks" as Labour was when last in government.

"At least we didn't crash the British economy," he pleaded.