After 1,148 days of intensive research it has finally transpired that the MP Keith Vaz wasn’t up at 11.30pm on a Saturday in August 2016 to discuss soft furnishings, scatter pillows, door handles and Farrow & Ball paint with his interior designers but was no doubt engaging in paid sexual activity with two male escorts while offering to procure cocaine for another.

We know this because of a 100-minute tape which begins: “We need to get this party started.” Words I might conceivably have said if I had hired a team of builders for a pied-à-terre but then the MP for Leicester East tells the two “decorators” to call him “Jim”. He explains that he is an industrial washing machine seller, “not little ones for