What is the right punishment for Just Stop Oil’s Cambridge protestor?

As a longstanding supporter of ancient over modern in the architecture stakes, it can only grieve me to see the front wall of King’s College, Cambridge defaced by the orange paint of Just Stop Oil. But that’s what happened to a ten-metre stretch of stone wall near the porters’ lodge yesterday.

I left those very hallowed portals more than a quarter of a century ago. In my day, a similar attack was carried out on the college by visitors from the Polytechnic of North London who had been invited to an event by chi-chi socialists in the King’s student body. Back then, King’s was the home of radical chic, while ‘PNL’ was the leftist real deal and its students no-doubt rejoiced on the way back down the M11 at having put one over on their over-privileged hosts.

This week’s suspected miscreant was swiftly arrested – a pink-trousered, poodle haired person whose gender it would be hazardous to guess.