Why Brandreth’s blissfully ignorant of all things Brexit

AGED 70, Gyles Brandreth has discovered the secret of a happy life — to avoid spending a single minute watching anything about Brexit on television or listening to it on radio, or reading about it.

‘I now have time to read War And Peace for the first time; next up is going to be Proust,’ Brandreth tells me at the party marking the publication of Oscar: A Life, a biography of Oscar Wilde by Matthew Sturgis.

Brandreth, president of the Oscar Wilde Society, says it is a lesson his son, Benet, a Remainer, has failed to learn. ‘He’s put on weight — sitting in front of the television, drinking wine, getting angry.’