When the chips are down, the pen is a little dry or I’ve needed a cheap laugh from an unforgiving audience, over the best part of the past 14 years I’ve been able to rely on one ace: Kwasi Kwarteng. The first Black chancellor and – still – the most powerful Black person in British history, however briefly.

I could have been kinder and gentler. Using him as an illustrative point in Think Like a White Man (my 2019 satire on being Black in the professional world), I compared Kwarteng’s hairline to the wonky lines of a colonial border, among many other quips, yet my critiques and roastings of the talented Mr Kwarteng were never personal, as I’d never had the opportunity to meet him properly. That all changed at 5:55am on Thursday at the west London studios of Good Morning Britain, where we were both booked to face off for the political panel.

First impressions: unhelpful as it may sound, Kwasi Kwarteng is best described as “different”. Alternative in a manner unlike anyone I think I have met before. He is the usual cocktail of upper-middle-class rightwing Black conservatism: contrarian, excessively confident, assertive, stubborn, seemingly confused in places and about their place, full of easily compromised yet rigidly presented........

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