I have no doubt that she is good company in the drawing-rooms of people who are not involved in politics or public life, but that is not why she is in Malta.

But I’ll tell you this: when I get warning bells from observing somebody in a non-public context, I swore I would never ignore them again. And I don’t, not any more. All the big mistakes I have made about people, throughout my life, I have made because I blanked out that little bleeping alert at the back or forefront of my mind.

Men are rarely the best judges of women. Like it or not, their assessment is obscured by other things even if they are not aware of it. Incidentally, this includes gay men, who have ‘collected’ this ambassador for reasons that have nothing to do with her conversation, knowledge or diplomatic prowess. They have collected her because she is camp.

Over the past 25 years as a political columnist, I have met literally lorry-loads of ambassadors and quickly learned how to sort out those who were getting off on the social scene from those who meant business. Those in the latter category were invariably fully apprised of the minutiae of the Maltese political scene down to the last detail, including the dynamics between people, and with some excellent character assessments.

The current US ambassador is about as clued-up in this regard as I would be if catapulted into Beijing society tomorrow. And that is exactly why she has made so very many mistakes.

In all fairness, she is no more useless in this regard than her recent predecessors, but they did not have a penchant for playing the social butterfly and accepting all invitations – largely, I suspect, because they were men and men hate that kind of thing.

I hope she finds him/her and fire them. I can’t imagine a British ambassador behaving like this. Let’s not judge the ambassador by this behavior; she is being natural.

So’s that not the embassy staff at all, but extras for the video?