Many years ago I knew – distantly – a very wealthy man.  Brought up in the East End of London he made his spondulicks in the rag trade, and plenty of them: he finished up driving a Rolls Royce and living in the Avenue Road, St John’s Wood.   But his products were shoddy: poor quality wool (for the lucky ones) or acryclic, badly stitched,  the kind of thing that cost tuppence, and lasted a week if you were lucky (and didn’t wash ’em), their design coarse and colourless.

One thing, and one thing only, he gave me: a piece of advice, “you never lose money under-estimating the public.”  I pass that on, free gratis and for nothing, to those wondering how on earth anybody ever voted for our dishevelled, filthy, lying, cowardly, bullying cheat of a prime minister.