“I have to stick up for Phyllis, because she’s been taking me out on her boat for years.”

There’s no way the prime minister is going to get rid of her. This is the woman who’s been hosting him to supper and taking him and his wife and children out on her boat (moored in Mellieha) for years.

Before she did it with Muscat, she did it with Alfred Sant. When he vanished from view after losing his umpteenth election in a row, back in 2008, Sant was holed up at Phyllis Muscat’s house on the Santa Maria Estate.

This Slovakian farmwoman type knows her cunning onions – because she can never hope to be a seductress (though quite frankly you never know with men), she plays Mother instead.

Incidentally, will reporters stop repeating the legend that Phyllis Muscat “is in the cosmetics industry” and that “she set up several businesses”?

People who are ‘in the cosmetics industry’ MAKE cosmetics. They’re companies like Revlon and Max Factor and L’Oreal. They don’t import the cosmetics made by others, in small batches, and wholesale them on to beauty salons in a place with a population of under half a million.

Mrs Muscat imports tubes and jars of face cream made by others elsewhere and sells them to beauticians. There are no “several businesses” and there is most certainly no “industry”. So let’s keep a sense of perspective. If Mrs Muscat were really on the ball, she wouldn’t have made such a grand hash of her one and only interview.