You can’t teach this on Zoom

The other night I went to bed with Peter Scott and Arthur Cadman. It was a dream ménage à trois for me that felt not unlike the time in training on Dartmoor when a sadistic colour sergeant removed every item of waterproof or warm kit from two other young Royal Marines officers and me. We were left alone and very, very cold.

But our troop commander was not the hard-nosed Yorkshireman he pretended to be. By way of compensation for our extreme discomfort he brought waterproofed matches and permission to go ‘nontac’. This meant a “ging-gang gooly like Fred Karno’s Army” as the irate colour sergeant called it.

I ended up snuggled comfortably between a para-trained psychopath from Glasgow and a signaller from Taunton, while a bonfire to compare with the