Having been a journalist in Parliament in the Eighties, I remember Geoffrey Dickens. He was a “rentaquote” – a man who could be relied on to say something noisy on almost any subject and thus boost one’s rather feeble stories. He was also the sort who would say controversial things in Parliament if prompted with “information” from our trade. We therefore treated him without our usual harsh censure when he admitted his first mistress, with whom he attended thés dansants, and when his second mistress was subsequently revealed. The late, great Frank Johnson, parliamentary sketch-writer for this paper, described him as “the second most famous Dickens in English comedy”. Dickens was not an expert on child abuse. Indeed, he was so unused to the word “paedophile” that he said “fidopile” in his speeches. Without wanting to be unkind, I would say he did not know very much about very much.