News in the Guardian of the birth of a son to William and Kate distracts me from my duties. But only for a moment: for on the very same page David Marr, arch anti-Catholic paedophile hunter and staunch refugee advocate, is shedding buckets of tears again. This time, a long, heart-wrenching diatribe condemning not only Rudd’s latest policy, but the outrageous behaviour of all of our leaders towards refugees over the past 40 years: David’s litany of ‘Shame… Brutality…cruelty… toxic policy… drownings … appalling… for a civilised country… barbaric…,’ etc., doesn’t bring tears to my eyes.

I decide to ring him and try to cheer him up a little with the news of the prince’s birth, but he seems inconsolable. “How is it that an arrival of a new Anglo-Saxon prince, in a far away country, our probable future King,” David sobs, “how can that possibly be of more importance than the sanctimonious lectures in guilt readers can get reading my news columns crying about poor refugees every morning? It doesn’t make sense,” he says, as I again quietly hang up on him.

I was thinking that the same cream footballer Dane Swann used to remove the tattoos from his body the other week may be of use for columnists who, like David, have great difficulty living in the real world. Carefully rubbing the cream on selected portions of his computer screen each morning can make Rudd, Abbott, the Pope, and the rest of all those nasty people he really can’t stand the sight of, just go away.