There is always a risk, at Hooting Yard, of creeping monomania. A bee finds its way into my bonnet, and buzzes about. Fortunately for readers, and for my own sanity, the bee tends to buzz off after a few hours or days and things get back to normal.

That by way of preamble to a note which might lead some to think this place has become AntiFry Central. The Most Intelligent Life-Form In The Known Universe was interviewed on BBC’s Newsnight yesterday – mercifully briefly – about the MPs’ expenses hoo-hah. He claimed that everybody, including himself, fiddled their expenses, that it was nothing to get worked up about, and that making a fuss about it was “bourgeois”. (This while suited and booted in black tie for some event he was attending.) Oh, how we vomited here at Haemoglobin Towers!

I have a new heroine, however. Back in the studio, discussing the same topic, the MP Kate Hoey referred contemptuously to “that actor, whoever he is” and how he was talking twaddle. Gold star for her.