A Times correspondent advised that during a trip to the post office for some purchases, when paying with his credit card he also produced five nuisance pound coins and asked the young female simpleton serving him to exchange them for a five-pound note.

By the time you read this I’ll be in Istanbul for the election, notwithstanding the pre-ordained result. Still, the fervour of such events is always entertaining.

My favourite faux democracy event was in rich and corrupt Azerbaijan a few years ago when a government halfwit cocked up and published the results on the wrong date, specifically the day before the voting occurred.

Reading the wonderful quality newspapers still available by dint of population numbers in Britain, I’ve drawn a clear conclusion about financial market columnists.

I was amused to read that the Irish comedian Dylan Moran was “incoherently drunk” in his debut show in Christchurch, New Zealand. He’s hardly the first to find such consolation before performing. The all-time champion in this well-travelled road was Dylan Thomas.

How to explain this appetite by some women to deny their ancestry and instead claim they’re eskimos and the like. We’re well familiar with this “look at me” oddity in New Zealand regarding claimed maori heritage but we’re not alone. Such exposures are seemingly a monthly event in America. The latest to be unmasked is a Berkley professor, Elizabeth Hoover of the pseudo academic subject of sociology.