Ah, the theories. The theories and the jokes. Last week, as you’ll know, the two Russian suspects accused of seeking to murder the former spy Sergei Skripal did a bizarre, hilarious interview on Russian television, in which they professed a love of Salisbury’s tourist sites and ended up vaguely implying that they might also have a different sort of love for each other. British social media was delighted. My favourite gag was the suggestion that MI5 should have anticipated the first half of this, and perhaps changed the Wikipedia entry for Salisbury Cathedral to say it was “designed by the famous architect Dale Winton”.

In my Saturday satirical column, I toyed with the conceit that two scary assassins had been forced to do their