It was always going to be a good one wasn’t it? There was almost a sense of guilt watching today’s PMQs. My fellow sketch writers and I felt like the people who slow down to get a good view of a particularly horrific pile-up on a dual carriageway.

Confirmation of this came when the Prime Minister dispensed with his usual embarrassing self-congratulatory monologue at the start of PMQs and simply told the House he’d had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. One hopes that the latter category includes the Metropolitan Police.

We started with a little hors d’oeuvre of Labour incompetence. A nondescript Scottish MP had been primed to talk about how the SNP were the enemy of the high street. ‘She’s a superb champion for Paisley’, droned Sir Keir in reply. It’s funny how, even when trying to avoid the topic of Lord Mandelson, the Prime Minister managed to sound like he was praising him. I bet the ex-ambassador never wore a plain-patterned tie in his life.

Mrs Badenoch stood up quietly and, resplendent in a white dress, made her case calmly and yet also furiously, like a wronged bride at a sham wedding. After paying tribute to Epstein’s victims she asked: did the Prime Minister know about Epstein’s links with Mandy when he appointed him? A very brief question and, I suspect, all the more terrifying for being so.

Sir Keir then commenced a speech only marginally less self-indulgent than Cardinal Newman’s ‘Apologia pro Vita Sua’. If anything, Sir Keir was the victim, ackshully. ‘To learn that there was a cabinet........

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