One thing I love about classical music – you can’t fake it. You can’t pick up the violin and fake Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. The notes are on the page, they are black and white and if you can’t play them properly people know in an instant. You simply can’t bullshit your way through the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.

But you can bullshit your way to the White House in a stream of fake news and alternative facts. Whatever your politics, the current US president is an enemy of the truth. He is the equivalent of someone picking up the violin, scratching two notes that sound like cat’s claws on a blackboard and proudly asserting on Twitter that they have just given a performance of the Tchaikovsky that was the best EVER.

He seems to be missing a gene for embarrassment. The website Politifact keeps a scorecard on Donald Trump. Of the statements he has made, 5% are completely true, 15% half true, 20% mostly false, 32% false and 16% outright lies. So adding up the figures, Trump is talking rubbish consciously or unconsciously for a staggering 72% of the time. (To be fair, Politicfact also lists four webpages of falsehoods that Barack...