I went on Saturday’s Women’s March, of course. I couldn’t not. I wasn’t quite sure why – until I heard of an elderly woman with a placard saying: “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit.” That is exactly how I felt. I started marching about and protesting in 1959 from Aldermaston, and here I was, with the same old chums, still at it. Bombs have not been banned, and dangerous, mendacious rogues are still in charge.

“Go and toddle up and down if you must,” said Rosemary crabbily, having decided not to come. So I did, and out there in the sun, surrounded by 100,000 mainly cheery protesters, with generally high quality and witty banners, I did feel rather more optimistic that perhaps the apocalypse wasn’t as close as I had feared.

Because other things have changed since those days. In 1983, I went to a huge anti-nuclear rally in Hyde Park, of 200,000 people, even according to the police. The marchers all looked fairly conventional. I saw no hippies, no wild behaviour. It was a rather sombre affair. But my daughter was a baby and in her pushchair, so I went home early before the crush, and watched the march on telly.

Was this the same march? The numbers had been halved, and TV news had dredged up someone prancing about with a pink CND symbol painted on her face, and shown a few seconds of footage of Michael Foot as his false teeth came loose. We had been portrayed as a weedy crowd of sillies led by an incoherent dodderer. But it was all lies. My friend Nick, who stayed behind, told me that Foot’s speech was brilliant, statesmanlike and inspiring.

This was my first experience of giant fibs and misrepresentation on the news. But they can’t do this any more. Because we have social media. We can show everyone what’s really going on: our crowd was bigger than Trump’s crowd, our banners more amusing, our behaviour better. So it is still worth marching and protesting, and shaming and mocking wicked leaders. Until we win. Or die trying.