Anybody around in the 1980s who owned one of those new-fangled tellybox gadgets will recall this elderly fellow. In a famous BT advert he tottered around a bunch of second-hand book stores, searching for a dusty old volume that he couldn’t find anywhere.

BoJo will be hoping Mr JR Hartley is equally unlucky when it comes to unearthing a certain hot potato of a report, even if the spelling turns out to be less than perfect...