When someone asks ‘How are you?’ you have to assume your interlocutor is only being polite.
Anyone who returns a ball-by-ball commentary about their aches and pains, work-life balance and reduced chances of summer fun thanks to the heat storm should immediately be sent to Coventry for the rest of time. That said, I am just back from wintry New Zealand where I have been in a Channel 4 series called Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. Despite my pledge that I’d never do any more shows with the word ‘celebrity’ in the title, this one brought out the Bond Girl manquée in me and I couldn’t resist. I can’t say any more about it as it’s not out till early next year (the Matt Hancock one is about to hit our screens) but if asked I say: ‘Fine, apart from fractured rib and pulled glute.’ Then of course I have to explain my injuries were sustained during a forward abseil race down the 330ft-high Clyde Dam. I find this shuts people up. Nobody likes a show-off.

It was my first time in New Zealand – it’s a bit like flying for two entire days via Dubai and Sydney only to end up in the Highlands – where bio-fascism is all around (as you might guess, given Ms Ardern’s loopy zero-Covid response). A friend who went through the airport just before me was fined hundreds of dollars for having a tangerine in her hand luggage. If it had been two pieces of citrus fruit, she was told, it could have been thousands. If you have soil on your hiking boots, you have to declare them and surrender them for decontamination.

As I came though Queenstown airport, I had to exit through a bio-security lane where a border guard with a spaniel was checking everyone. As I walked past, the dog sat down by my backpack, which was the tell the canine could smell contraband. Somehow, I got away with it. Imagine the shame of having to say ‘I never made it in actually – I was put in prison for smuggling in five Yorkshire teabags in a sock’ instead of bragging about my broken rib. I left New Zealand impressed. If only we cared even 1 per cent as much about the natural world and the environment as the Kiwis do.

At lunch at Wilton’s this week with Dylan Jones. The new editor of the Standard asked me to come up with a title for his forthcoming memoir, which I did (I made the exact same suggestion as his agent, Cover Story, which shows what an unoriginal mind I have). Then he mentioned he also had a book coming out about the Velvet Underground. ‘Hold on Dylan,’ I complained. ‘I’ve only just been to a launch of your last book about the 1990s at the Groucho!’ His industry is nothing short of outrageous. ‘Have you written another book since lunch?’ I asked him around teatime. If publishing addiction exists as a notifiable disorder, Dylan may have it.

As a midlifer, I wanted Djoko to win a fifth successive men’s single title on centre court on Sunday. The marathon match concluded minutes before I was due on air on LBC at 7 p.m., which was a relief, as I was jetlagged and did not want to spout about child benefit and public-sector pay deals without any contribution from our valued callers. The crowd was with Carlos in his mission to dislodge the court-blocker, but the Serb still has his superfans, chief among whom is the novelist Daisy Waugh. I can’t count the ways she loves him – a clue is that she found the world’s collective response to that virus giddy-making in its stupidity – but suffice to say she has dedicated her delicious, waspish new comedy Old School Ties to our unvaxed hero.

Re Rishi Sunak (Winchester, then PPE at Oxford) and his new crackdown on rip-off low-value degrees. If any of my many nephews and nieces ask my advice, I tell them (if they live in London) not to go to university in the capital, and then I say that if they’re going to spend three or four years reading and writing about something, it has to be a subject they’re keen on. I have prior here. One of my sons is sports (especially football) mad, and during A-levels discovered a degree called Sports Management at Manchester. This was Savile Row hand-tailored for him and would have provided a perfect professional pipeline into a multi-billion-pound industry and global obsession. We encouraged him to apply. But the boy was worried that people would think it was a ‘Mickey Mouse’ course and chose law instead. In the end, Manchester kicked him out because, try as he might, he could not pass the property law module (one set textbook alone cost £100 and was about 1,000 pages long). He left, went into the world of sport and has never looked back. Let that be a lesson to you all.<//>