‘Now is the end! Perish the world!” In a hilarious 1961 sketch, the Beyond the Fringe team play a millenarian sect led to a mountain top by Peter Cook to await the end of the world. After protracted discussions about the precise form the apocalypse will take — “Will this wind be so mighty as to lay low the mountains of the earth?” “No, it will not be quite as mighty as that” — there is a long and expectant silence.

Nothing happens.

“Well, it’s not quite the conflagration I’d been banking on,” says Cook. “Never mind, lads. Same time tomorrow . . . we must get a winner one day.”

You might be forgiven for feeling that way about Brexit. This time seven days