No matter how much you try to digest the implications of the alleged Chinese spy scandal, some details are just comically indigestible. Take the fact that Prince Andrew has somehow contrived to find staff even stupider than him. Here is one senior aide called Dominic Hampshire, writing in March 2020 to the Chinese businessman with whom the Duke of York has found himself unfortunately entangled: “Outside of [Andrew’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.” Sorry, is this March 2020? A full four months after the four-dimensional pile-up that was Andrew’s Newsnight interview? Which was followed immediately by the duke’s own mother sacking him? Dominic, there were ventilators that people would rather have been on than that tree.

Or take the fact that the rural Buckinghamshire pub where David Cameron took the Chinese premier Xi Jinping for a pint in 2015 was bought by a Chinese firm called SinoFortune, which seems to have promised billions of UK investment that never materialised.

Anyway, if you’re just joining us after a news fast, I’m afraid that Prince Andrew may have Let The Wrong One In again. The Duke of York seems to have hired an alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, as his chief representative in China, and invited him a few times to Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace and his house. Yang denies he is a spy and insists he is just a businessman, while Andrew has been described – apparently by the Chinese embassy – as someone who “will grab on to anything”. Yes, I think I’ve seen the photos.

And yet, if the duke’s mate does turn out to be a spy, it feels a little too easy – and a lot too convenient – to blame........

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