This story registered not a jot in the U.S. or much on the BBC (increasingly the Beeb is cowering behind your licence fee), it fell to ITV to get the pictures and the legal threats from Cherie’s agents.

$50,000? Nice work if you can get it. Travelling over at the taxpayer’s expense, with the British ambassador as your warm-up man, what is wrong with that? As New Labour Unplugged paraphrases her “No one criticised Imelda Marcos when she went shoe buying … and the Chinese didn’t mind Madam Mao half running the country … so why am I being singled out?”