We want our politicians to be human – when they are, we condemn them for it

Thus finishing his grand survey,

Disgusted Strephon stole away

Repeating in his amorous fits,

Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!

That’s Jonathan Swift, as you’ll know, charting the disappointment of Strephon, the disillusioned peeping Tom. It came to me, though, reading the Mail on Sunday last week. For, therein, I learned that David Cameron had been text-ing Rebekah Brooks. Mainly about horses. In an informal tone. It’s a bloody outrage.

Is it? Isn’t it? I think it must be, otherwise I don’t see why I’d have to know about it. But which is the outrageous part? Cameron sent Brooks a text about riding a horse which read ‘fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun’. This is supposed to be terribly amusing, because it also sounds like it could have been about shagging.

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

Although it doesn’t really, does it? In fact, the only circumstances I can think of in which one might describe sex in such a manner would be if one were reviewing it, on a sex-reviewing website, a bit like -TripAdvisor. Indeed, once the bar for ‘sounding a bit like you mean shagging’ has been set so low, are there any safe ways in which to describe riding a horse? ‘Brownish, went clip-clop, smelled of horses.’ Fnarrr.

Brooks, meanwhile, was texting Cameron about his speeches. ‘I cried twice,’ she wrote, which is frankly double-edged, before adding, ‘will love “working together”.’ This bit seems to be the real scandal. ‘The working-together text offers a glimpse of a much more sinister and serious matter,’ wrote a blogger for the Guardian. It’s like he hadn’t seen that episode of Friends, where they explain to Joey that putting quote marks around something means you don’t really mean it. As if I was to say, ‘nice work, the Guardian! Well done with that “sober analysis”.