Two aristocrats were on screen this week: the real one was a plain Mr, and the false, a Duchess. Neither was great: aristocrats are not what they were, eh, Darcy? But we must take what we get, and the false one’s performance was the more amiable.

Mr Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, now in his 80s, was interviewed genially, even genuflectingly, by Melvyn Bragg in last Sunday’s South Bank Show, (ITV, Sunday), that miraculous survivor of ITV1. He was laconic, and sad; his 40-year idyll in Rome and Ravello has ended with a return to Hollywood because, as he said, he had to be near a hospital and, for a rich man, being near an American one is clearly the wise choice – even if, as he also said, the country which contains them is run by a mad man and its political class is a mafia.