It’s always fun when worlds collide – when two people whose paths should rightfully never intersect smash into one another like a car and train at a level crossing. I’ve enjoyed many such occurrences on the political scene over the years – like Mrs Thatcher doing the video vote on Saturday Superstore with René from ‘Allo ‘Allo. But I never expected to find myself involved in one.

I have to admit I never expected to get into the middle of a rap beef, let alone one connected to the Daily Telegraph

That all changed on Saturday evening. There I was happily rolling pastry in the kitchen when suddenly my phone and other connected smart devices started flashing and pinging like a Chernobyl control panel. I snatched up my phone in my floury fingers to discover that I had been ‘dragged’ on X/Twitter by American rapper Azealia Banks.

It appeared that Banks had taken exception to the headline of a piece I wrote for the Telegraph last week about the magnificent poise, control, comic timing and serious intelligence of Kemi Badenoch in her Commons response to the King’s Speech.

The headline was, ‘It is no surprise Nicki Minaj loves slay queen Kemi’, referring to Minaj’s similarly enthusiastic reaction to this event. (I should state here that Nicki Minaj is another American rap star.)

‘This is the garbage pail kid who called Kemi Badenoch a “slay queen”’ Banks tweeted, accompanying her blast with two photographs of me. She added, ‘Fucking garbage eater’ to stress her point.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that journalists don’t write the headlines above their columns, a task that’s rightly entrusted to editors who understand much better what will catch a reader’s eye, and also how to balance the spread of headings on the page. I suspect that Banks did not actually read the article, or she would have seen that it was approving of Badenoch. And that it made the case for her as a reviver of the tough British woman archetype, away from its irritating adoption as ‘camp’ by gay men and drag acts.

Banks has been equally effusive in her support for Kemi. So I think we are singing from the same hymn sheet here. I gather that there is a feud between her and Minaj, which may have exacerbated her angry tweeting fingers.

Still, I have to admit I never expected to get into the middle of a rap beef, let alone one connected to the Daily Telegraph. I mean, whatever next – Simon Heffer dissed by Kanye? Janet Daley trashed by Jay Z?

Worse still, I had to have the whole thing explained to me by someone younger. I’m afraid Banks’s high days in the hit parade came around 2011, just after I stopped keeping even the semblance of an eye on the charts. And rap, frankly, has never been my cup of musical poison. Her name was vaguely familiar to me, but that was all. After some coaching, I was able to frame it in terms that I could understand – that it was a bit like being slagged off by Clodagh Rodgers in the mid-80s, a good 15 years after ‘Jack in the Box’ was the top bop.

Both Banks and Minaj have taken a lively interest in British politics of late. This is refreshing, considering the amount of time we spend obsessing about the American scene. Indeed, Banks had another recent splutter at Minaj over Minaj’s love for Thatcher, saying:

‘Kemi is WAY BETTER than Margaret Thatcher – who in my opinion is one of the worst PM’s in UK history.

Margaret and, Theresa May and Liz Truss all fucking suck but i get that Kemi has to do the song and dance because they’re women and she needs to seem like shes a girl girl … But all of Britains female prime ministers have been GARBAGE.’

This interest taken in Conservative party politicians by American rappers is new, and arresting. I am ready to be corrected on this, but I don’t think that, back in the day, Tupac had much to say about William Waldegrave.

As for me being a ‘garbage pail kid’ – these were comical chubby characters on 1980s trading cards, with button eyes and big round faces, usually pictured midway through some undignified activity or other. Fair enough, Ms Banks, fair enough.