Actually, I'm feeling a little exhausted by the constant badinage — chatting with [Piers] Morgan is like endlessly throwing a stick for a demented bo… - Camilla Long

Perhaps the nastiest attack is reserved for someone outside the family: a description of a one-legged landlady who fails to provide Cusk with hot and cold running lattes on a riding holiday in Devon.

It's weird when someone close to you is arrested. It's as if they’ve been deleted: there’s a stream of text messages as normal, and then there isn't. You think, at first: oh, he hasn’t got reception. Then you think: well, he can't still not have reception. Hertfordshire isn't Lapland. Where is he? For an hour I thought Ben had had a car accident and was unconscious in hospital or dead.

As the ceremony started and magic finally began to seep in, it became clear what sort of magic this was: it was the full panto, rabbit-out-of-the-hat, balloon-animal type of magic, rather than the divine right of kings.