My university friend HB was waiting for me in the lobby of the Welsh Assembly with a slightly overweight woman who resembled her.

‘Hello’, I said cheerily as I introduced myself. ‘You must be HB’s sister.’

‘No, I am Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary’, she replied in disgust.

Then the three of us found our positions in a meeting room for a televised debate. The politicians became increasingly annoyed when they noticed that the members of the public in attendance were more interested in sports news broadcast on a large screen in the corner of the room than they were in the views of the Foreign Secretary. Technical staff hovered in the  background, ready to pull the plug on one or other of these two forms of ‘entertainment’.