It’s August. Dog days. Holiday time. Offices of state close down and decisionmakers cut and run. It’s a time when a good family man ought to be taking to the countryside, or the sun and sand. Buckets and spades. Picnics. Casual clothes. Sunburn. Cleaning children’s cut knees. More beer, gin and tonics and sex than usual. Barbecues. And so on.

An American president might think of the foamy seas of New England – get away from the muzzy swamp that’s Washington in late summer. And of a long-promised round of golf in Ballybunion, Ireland’s capital of bachelors and beaches....

Yeah, he might. But US president Bill Clinton finds himself with a whole lot of hassle to deal with first. There’s the personal stuff which has been jemmied into the public by the extraordinary, unbelievably intrusive and prurient inquiry of “special prosecutor” Kenneth Starr. There’s the attacks on the American embassies in Africa. There’s Saddam Hussein pissing about again. Never one to miss an opportunity.