As the rush for seats, desks and bag-carriers makes way for the start of a new school term, spare a moment for one newbie MP who doesn’t seem too fussed about being sworn in to her recently won office or taking part in her ancient constitutional duty to elect the Speaker.

Chi Onwurah, Labour’s Newcastle newbie, asked at a meeting of the new MPs last week whether attendance today was strictly compulsory as she already had somewhere better to be. It turns out she had been asked to call the bingo numbers in her constituency.

Clearly the Commons was not quite the House she had in mind…