As imagined by Brian Beacom

GUYS, I appreciate you giving me the chance to tell my side of the story, rather than swallow the version put out by those bitter mandarins in Whitehall, who clearly don’t appreciate the work I don’t do.

All this grief about me being on holiday during the Afghan crises is frankly absurd. Doesn’t everyone need to play a little paddle tennis in a deluxe five-star hotel?

In 2012, I co-authored a book which claimed that British workers are ‘among the worst idlers in the world’. When it comes to idling, I know what I’m talking about.

Just because the world is facing the imminent danger of state-sponsored terror re-emerging, with the possible loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, is that a reason to pick up the iPhone?

Look, you guys in Scotland will appreciate this; imagine someone had tried to phone you just as you’re watching the final episode of Still Game? Are you going to pass up learning what happened to Jack and Victor until you go down the pub the next day – or are you going to stay in Craiglang?

Okay, perhaps a luxury hotel in Crete isn’t quite a rat-infested scheme in deprived north Glasgow, but you see my point. And consider this: doesn’t the job of Foreign Secretary imply, by its very description, I get to go to foreign places? And let’s not hear from the SNP on this one. Didn’t Humza Yousaf disappear off to Harry Potterland when Covid was running amok?

Is my job is on a ‘shoogly peg’, as you so colourfully describe it?

Well, I would admit the peg is a bit loose, but nothing I’m sure a squirt of Gorilla Glue, in the form of reminding Boris that he went AWOL during last year’s Cobras, should fix that.

Should I have known about the ‘ghost’ soldiers, who didn’t exactly exist, or listened to intel that revealed the Taliban had been seen in Carpetwise in Kabul holding measuring tapes and talking quality underfelt? Does that matter? I had informed the PM I had booked the second fortnight in August. And wouldn’t you want a holiday from Boris? Plus, we have lots of Foreign Office chaps who can refuse to take calls, just like me.

Look, I appreciate there were thousands of terrified people desperately trying to escape this horrid place. But surely, we must be positive? Perhaps the Taliban aren’t the beheading, Kalashnikov-wielding madmen they once were. They may well be rather more Dad’s Army these days. Akhundzada may even be a Captain Mainwaring.

And doesn’t everyone, no matter how lacklustre, how useless, deserve a second chance?

And by everyone, I really mean me. I know that defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned yesterday that Britain must ‘tool up’ to combat the new threat of terrorism. Well, I am that tool. I will work tirelessly to make sure these chaps in Kabul don’t declare Jihad and murder us in our beds, no matter which Med pool I happen to be lounging by at the time.