Do you remember the mini-furore over Andy Burnham’s scurrilous innuendo-rich suggestion of some kind of seduction of Basher Davis after “late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with” Shami Chakrabarti? In the last month they have appeared on Question Time together and Basher was coincidentally in the audience to ask Shami a question when she was on the panel at an Intelligence Squared event last week.

Last night they lingered long after everyone else at the Political Studies Association Awards at 1 Great George Street. (Clegg and Cameron jointly won politician of the year, Liberty and, errm, the Southall Black Sisters won the award for setting the political agenda. Sir David Frost got Best Political Satire – only 40 years late.)

You know how it is, you can’t bring yourself to leave the restaurant, the candles are melting low, you make small-talk about detention orders only to steal one more delicious moment of time with a soul-mate.

Basher and Shami had switched seats earlier in the night and left together only after everyone else had gone.