Many years ago in a dingy church hall, way down the other end of the Portobello Road in London, far far beyond the tourists and all the totters’ tat, I once heard one of the best political speeches of my life. It was delivered by John Cleese over the heads of a largely uninterested audience of British voters, most of whom were far more absorbed in picking over the piles of manky old coats  and woolly jumpers on offer that afternoon at a Labour Party jumble sale. Cleese had been persuaded into an appearance at this decidedly low-key event and had agreed to mark it with a speech. This was the mid 1970s and he was already quite famous, but not famous enough to mind that nobody much was listening – and in a way that made the point about what he had to say.