THE story of the Chinese tourists in Kidlington, amusing as it is, has supplied every opportunity for commentators to be beastly about a village widely regarded as Britain’s largest.

True, Kidlington has rather a lot to be beastly about, but must beastliness be delivered in tones of such wearisome snootiness?

An example of this was seen in The Sunday Times, in an article by Camilla Long. She, by the way, for all the ranty, loud-mouthiness of her columns, is remembered as the veriest shrinking violet by classmates during her education at Oxford High School.

Kidlington was a place, she tells us, that she spent “the best part of 20 years trying not to visit” (whether successfully is unclear).

Bizarrely, she turns her piece into an attack on the excellent new Parkway station there, which she believes to be patronised by David Cameron en route to his Cotswold home.

This would, I think, be a rather odd travel choice, with Charlbury station so much closer to Chadlington, assuming Dave were to take the train rather than drive/be driven.

In fact, the outgoing Prime Minister did use the Chiltern line on the day he opened the Parkway. I was at the day’s celebrations, during which I learned of the £1,000 average spend of Chinese visitors to Bicester Village, a fact I duly reported here.

They, and other well-heeled tourists, now have a swanky dedicated station there, complete with staff to help marshal purchases.

Ms Long’s mother is doubtless correct in believing (as Camilla reports) that the trips to Kidlington are a money-saving wheeze by bus drivers charged with the task of showing visitors Cotswold villages rather farther off; Burford or Bibury, say.

The Chinese are not alone, of course, in wanting to see how life is lived elsewhere.

Their actions remind me, somewhat embarrassingly, of the detour I took on a trip to Morocco’s Atlas Mountains to visit a typical Berber family. I can still taste their sickly mint tea.