All obituaries of Alan Whicker mentioned Monty Python’s spoof, Whicker Island (above) — though there was less uniformity over the age of the deceased, most newspapers saying he was 87 rather than the correct 91, as reported in The Times. But none of them indicated what Whicker thought of the sketch, which I’d rather like to have been told.

Cyril Connolly, who was name checked rather less prominently by the Pythons in Eric the Half a Bee (“I loved him carnally, semi-carnally. Cyril Connolly?”), was mightily amused, as his daughter once told me. It had quite cheered the ailing literary critic in his last years, she said. It is a fair guess that Whicker was similarly amused. A good sport, he once entered an Alan Whicker lookalike contest — and came third.