‘Jeremy Corbyn night’ at the Forum in Kentish Town on Monday should have been a scene of orgiastic pleasure for socialist Labour. Corbyn’s victory was the triumph the grand old reactionaries of north London have been waiting a generation for. But they weren’t happy; they were as angry and full of bile as ever. The scene took me right back to my childhood in Islington in the 1970s. My neighbours in the queue outside the Forum had posher voices than you hear at Annabel’s.

   Washington DC Ben Carson is relaxed. ‘He’s always relaxed,’ says an aide. The next televised Republican primary debate is two days away, but Dr Carson is about to begin his first rehearsal for it. The preternatural calm he exudes is presumably what gave him his steady hands during the 22-hour operation that led to him becoming the first surgeon to successfully separate Siamese twins fused at the head. That operation is part of the Carson legend: growing up poor, black, becoming chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins aged 33.

Well, of course the Assisted Dying Bill failed. It mattered not a jot that an overwhelming majority of public opinion urged its success; it was always going to fail and the only surprising thing is that anybody is surprised. I’ll bet my teeth on a few more certainties, too. Last week the required 200,000 people put down their spliffs long enough to sign a petition in favour of decriminalising cannabis and thus, in October, the matter will be debated by MPs.

The reaction of the chap on the door at Le Bidule told me that they weren’t used to seeing English stag parties in La Baule. His eyes narrowed and a scowl spread across his face. Marching up to our sober stag, dressed for the evening in typical Gallic attire, he finger-wagged aggressively at the beret, fake moustache and string of garlic. ‘Ça, ça et ça — non,’ came straight from the de Gaulle school of diplomacy. The response to my timid ‘Pourquoi?’ left us in little doubt: if we wanted our aperitif, the outfit had to go.