APPROPRIATELY,

Theresa May and her team have flown to India for the first of their post-Brexit trade deal talks. The cobbled-together coalition in charge of negotiating our departure from the European Union is already beginning to resemble the cast of It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum — the classic BBC comedy written by the late David Croft and Jimmy Perry, who died recently. The show was set at the end of World War II and centred on the antics of a Royal Artillery concert party based at a depot in Deolali, India, near Mumbai — or Bombay as it used to be called. Deolali was the site of a sanitorium which housed patients who were diagnosed as having gone temporarily mad. It’s where the slang term ‘doolally’ — meaning bonkers — got its name. Like the Brexiteers, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum has been smeared as racist and reactionary, and the BBC refuses to show repeats. Since the Remoaners think that anyone who voted Leave has gone completely doolally, why not play up to it? The Brexiteers seem to spend half their time slagging each other off, anyway. So maybe it’s time to remake the show — It Ain’t Half Hot, May. How about this for a cast? Starring Theresa May as the Colonel; David ‘Windsor’ Davis as Sergeant Major Shut-Up; Boris Johnson as Bombardier ‘Gloria’ Graham; Liam Fox as Lofty; Jacob Rees-Mogg as Gunner ‘Lah-di-dah’ Graham; Philip Hammond as the punkawallah and Nigel Farage as Rangi Ram. Fine pair of kitten heels. Show ’em off, show ’em off, show ’em off. Altogether now, lovely boy. Dum, dum, diddly-um-dumdum and . . .

Meet the gang, We’re the Brexiteers, We’re going to leave the EU.

With trade deals and borders, That we can control, It’s goodbye to Brussels, ’Cos we’re on a roll.

So stuff all the judges, To hell with Remain, We’ve nothing to lose now, And ev’rything to gain.

So meet the gang, We’re the Brexiteers, We’re going to leave the EU.

B-R-E-X-I-T, We’re going to leave the EU!