Love is a many splendoured thing. Cupid’s darts find the most unexpected targets. I am not for one minute prepared to exclude the possibility that erotic interest may flower between a man and a goat. The ancient Greeks clearly thought about the possibility: hence their mythologising about Pan and satyrs and other cloven-footed hybrids.

A cursory trawl of the internet reveals – according to the BBC – that in 2006 a Sudanese man called Tombe was surprised in the act of darkness with a female goat, and was obliged by the village elders to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars to its owner, and then to marry the beast. To the best of my knowledge they are still together.

But I don’t think there is anyone of any importance who seriously believes that there has been any kind of romance involving the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and any other non-human mammal, caprine or otherwise.