MONDAY

THE first sign that something was afoot came when I overheard Daphne Dorries on the phone telling some journalist that she thought Chapman Pincher had retired.

Later she pulled me aside and said: “Isn’t he a bit old to be conducting himself like that? I’m sure there must be an explanation.”

“Wrong Pincher, and besides,” I tell her icily “He’s been dead for eight years.”

Looking back, it was the fibs that finally did for him. At Greasy Gove’s suggestion, we actually gamed them to calculate which ones we thought would fly.

I suggested telling the truth from the outset and apologising for an error of judgment which arose from a burst of misplaced compassion.

But Gove’s people insisted he tell the porky about having forgotten the warnings.

In hindsight, I wonder if that was part of Greasy’s masterplan all along.

TUESDAY

CARRIE has read the runes too and has set up a new eBay account. There’s a plumber in, unscrewing the gold bathroom fittings and the rug she was gifted by that sultan who wanted to make her his English wife.

Monsignor Rees-Mogg suddenly materialises. “Perhaps I can put in a good word for you at the Vatican?” he suggests to the boss.

“We still have an unfilled diplomatic post in Formosa, and I think the Gold Coast is vacant too. Pope Francis has been very impressed by your fidelity for the last six months and thinks you’re showing promise as a Catholic.”

WEDNESDAY

ZELENSKYY finally takes the PM’s call. But there wasn’t even a shred of sympathy.

“Vot about ze Sam missiles and ze Fighter jets?” he asks immediately. “If you can send them maybe speedy delivery, that vil be good. I’m texting you also that Swiss bank account number ve discussed vor special defence projects.

“And I now grant you freedom of Kyiv. Which also includes the ancient right of unlimited lock-ins in any ov our bars and clubs.”

We knew something was afoot when several of his old friends wouldn’t take any of the PM’s calls on Tuesday.

“If they start any of their funny business, I’ll get Dacre to start looking into those quick disposals of shares in the Russian telecoms sector after Putin invaded,” says Boris.

The back office resembled the night after the school prom when all the losers who hadn’t got a lumber gathered together to drink pretentiously and talk about how close they came to getting a snog.

Daphne is in bits and begs Boris to make her Armed Forces Minister “It would just be for a couple of days, sweetie,” she says.

Rees-Mogg suggests a wildcat strike on a small African state for harbouring terrorists.

“They wouldn’t dare come for you in the middle of a war,” he says.

A secret delegation from the Chinese Embassy is spirited in. Seems it’s in their best interests to keep Boris in situ.

My old chum from the Cambridge Kung Fu club, David Du Wei, is now a military attache to the Chinese Embassy, and tells me they’ve successfully hacked every private electronic device of the Cabinet and their private secretaries. They’ve got enough fruit on them all to bribe them and ensure they spend the rest of their days carrying out good work in elderly care homes.

The CIA chief calls and offers to organise a couple of political assassinations and hang them around Iran’s neck.

“The CIA saved George W’s sorry ass 20 years ago by organising you know what,” he says conspiratorially.

THURSDAY

AND, just like that, he’s gone. But for how long? My friend Hugo at the Joint Chiefs calls to say there was an emergency hush-hush meeting the previous night with the code-word “Salvare Boris”.

Then I meet up with Pavlova Setterington-Clunie, my opposite number in the Labour Party. She’s cock-a-hoop, as she thinks Starmer is a shoo-in for Number 10 within the year.

“But you lot won’t mind a bit, as he’s the sleeper you were all hanging your hopes on.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, but she’s a bit sparkled on the strawberry daiquiris, and shares one of the most explosive political stories I’ve ever heard.

The long and the short of it is that a secret Boys From Brazil/Manchurian Candidate project was launched during the 60s to ensure there would be no more Labour governments.

Dozens of children were handed over by Tory fanatics, given a year of “special instruction”, and helped to gain selection for the Labour Party, deploying the usual bribery and coercion. They would gain high office and then would start acting on “instructions” after a trigger word was deployed on a pre-arranged Test Match Special broadcast.

“Blair was the first one before he went off the reservation by interfering in old Murdoch’s family affairs,” she says.