Are we all becoming better informed – or is it just me?

The difference between the debt and the deficit, I quite often find myself telling people, is like the difference between your overdraft and the gulf between what you earn and what you need. Even if you could reset the former to zero, somehow, the latter still be there, forever dragging you down.

‘But aren’t you the guy who writes a whimsical made-up diary in which you pretend to be Cheryl Cole, or tell sex jokes about Silvio Berlusconi?’ they’ll frequently reply. And they’re right, because that’s exactly who I am. But I’m bloody clever, too. I know loads of stuff. Lots of us do. More, I increasingly think, and more.

I never expected to know stuff. I never thought I was the sort. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I’d have thought that devolution max was a cough drink, or that Sunni and Shia were the couple who sang ‘I Got You Babe’.