A quarter-past-one struck, and he had been droning on for three-quarters of an hour. There are short 45-minute periods, like the second half of a cup-tie in which your team is 1-0 down. And there are long ones, like maths lessons. This was a very long 45 minutes.

There are other respects in which Gordon Brown Budgets resemble maths lessons, although they seem to allow for more creativity than one remembers being permitted on the old O-level syllabus.