After watching last night's performance as Trump addressed the Republican fun-raising meeting, I had expected extensive LGN reaction today, but apparently not. To call it extraordinary is a massive understatement. If anyone unknown to the public had stood before a crowd and behaved in this way on live television he would immediately have been escorted off the stage and arm-wrestled into a security van while being sedated. At moments as I was watching, sipping my Famous Grouse, I thought I must have drifted off and was experiencing a hallucinatory dream. It really was that incredible -- even by Trump's own standards of erratic behaviour. He would lambast "Sleepy Joe" Biden in one breath and without a pause or any link then launch into a vicious diatribe against CNN and ABC to be instantly followed without any discernible connection by a puffed-out chest bragging spree that he has reduced US health charges "by 40, 50, 60, 70 per cent".

The whole thing was so bizarre, even for Trump, that in the ballot was possible to detect a shifting unease, in that the orchestrated bouts of applause sounded hesitant and subdued. You could imagine them exchanging shift uneasy glances as the thought drifted up ... What the fuck is happening here and who is this cunt?