‘Before we get started,’ said George, holding up his right hand like an Indian chief in a fifties Western, ‘tell me that I’m not going insane.’

‘You’re not going insane,’ replied Jeremy.

‘Your receptionist out there. You used to have a chap called Aidan, didn’t you? Your new girl told me that he never existed. But I’m certain that I remember him. Or have I completely lost it?’

‘Ah,’ said Jeremy, nodding his head. ‘Technically, you’re correct. Or, technically, she’s correct. One of you is technically correct but, honestly, I’m not sure which one.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘That, in fact, was Aidan at the reception desk,’ explained Jeremy.

‘But that was a girl.’

‘Indeed. The thing is, Aidan now identifies as female and has asked that we call her Nadia. She’s, you know, transitioning. Or rather he’s transitioning. I think that’s right, isn’t it? He’s transitioning into a she? Or have I got it wrong? Was she always a she? To be honest, the whole thing’s a minefield. All I know is that I keep using the wrong pronoun and, every time I do, you’d think that I was expressing support for a campaign of ethnic cleansing.’

‘That was Aidan?’ asked George, leaning forward, his mouth dropping open in surprise. ‘That girl out there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, now,’ he said, shaking his head as he considered this. ‘I have to say, he’s done a bloody good job of it. I never would have guessed. He looks just like a girl. Quite an attractive girl too.’

‘You can’t say that.’

‘What, I can’t say that she’s attractive? But she is!’

‘No, you can’t say that he looks just like a girl. There is no he. There’s just a she. And she doesn’t look like a girl, she is a girl. Although, yes, you probably shouldn’t comment on her physical appearance either. You need to think before you speak these days, George, or they’ll come after you.’

‘They being?’

‘The Wokesters.’

‘The what?’

‘People that are, you know, constantly alert to every injustice in society, every perceived slight, and who are just desperate to let you know when they’ve found one. They seek them out with all the urgency of truffling pigs.’

‘My daughter’s dating a chap like that,’ said George, adopting a forlorn expression. ‘He has terrible body odour. I don’t know how she can stand it. He told me recently that he’d forced UCL to withdraw an invitation to a visiting American professor simply because he’d once served in the Bush administration.’

‘Oh, he sounds terribly Woke.’

‘The poor man wasn’t even a Republican and had written a book defining some of George W.’s worst crimes. But the fact that he’d served at all was enough to make him persona non grata. In my day, we would invite people we didn’t like to our campuses and then debate them. Put the bastards in their place. Not just ban them from the outset. It’s cowardly. And shows a shameful lack of oratorical skills.’