Speaking as a white man, don’t we have ghastly complexions? Par-baked like those bread rolls you can buy in supermarkets, we look like not quite the finished product. Glancing at the person opposite on the Tube the other day, I thought “if only I could be that colour”. He was in his late thirties, maybe, south Asian, maybe Sri-Lankan; and his skin was that beautiful golden brown that whispers that this is how humans were supposed to look.

White is just wrong for skin — a kind of mutation, as though some key pigment was missing from birth. It looks inbred. I met a girl when I was younger called Weetabix (she said her rural Nigerian parents had wanted her to have an English name,