Fellow travellers, you may have read about this strange event, in which the reactionary, peenie-waving London Mayor "Bonking Boris" Johnson saved Franny Armstrong - climate change activist and director of the searing film The Age of Stupid - from an attack by several young women.

I'm sure that this "brave" act was completely unnecessary. Ms Armstrong surely could have protected herself had he not arrived so "heroically" on the scene. That's why these comments are so bizarre: "He was my knight on a shining bicycle."

If she were being ironic, fine. But that's not something the sassy Ms Armstrong is known for.

I suspect that she really was retreating to the gender role paradigms of the past. This often happens to women in right-wing, conservative circles - even ones who appear to have been completely attitudinally reconstructed. And while it is depressing it is hardly surprising. But for Ms Armstrong to surrender in such a way? This is more than a little perturbing, fellow travellers.

Oh well, at least he did arrive on a bicycle and not a carbon spewing car. If she'd said he was her "knight in a shining Rolls Royce", well, that would have been just too distressing for words!