Brian Reade: Cummings' gag about testing his eyes was a true Bank Holiday comedy

When I was growing up we used to watch a comedy film on Bank Holidays.

So thanks to Downing Street for taking me back to my childhood and putting on Carry On Bullsh*tting.

That sketch about testing your eyes for a long drive by going for a longish one with your four-year-old in the car was cracking.

But the longer this excruciating exhibition of detachedness from reality went on, the less funny it was.

The interview was a Prince Andrew-style car crash.

And the sight of Cummings sucking in all the political oxygen due to breaking lockdown rules we had all been sticking to, on a day when we were waiting to hear from the Prime Minister when we could start to dismantle them, was a national disgrace.

His contempt for the Little People was evident from the off when he turned up more than half an hour late.

It continued when he kept answering questions by saying “with great respect” when his face was sneering at the reporter he was supposedly respecting.

The haughty disdain continued when he read out what sounded like an Enid Blyton story called Three Go For A Pee In The Woods. It read like a litany of excuses we’ve all heard given in school as teachers howled in disbelief.

Any moment I expected him to say he only drove to Durham because the cat peed on his satnav.

It was a tale in which he admitted multiple breaches of rules he helped draw up but he could not possibly apologise because it was all the media’s fault.

Throughout, I was recalling the many times Tony Blair’s senior adviser, Alastair Campbell, and Gordon Brown’s, Charlie Whelan, had said to me that once you become the story you have to go.

Which made you wonder that if someone with such abysmal judgment is the one giving advice to the Prime Minister in this time of crisis, we’re really in trouble.

Even if all that he said was true, what took him so long to give what he feels is a perfectly plausible explanation for his 520-mile round trip to Durham where we now know he didn’t “hunker down”?

You sensed that he had been pushed into that rose garden chair by dozens of Tory backbenchers who represent Middle England seats where the mood among constituents is toxic. I wonder how many of them felt less enraged afterwards.

His lack of an apology for the hurt he’d caused was almost as insulting as the shock he feigned when asked if he’d considered resigning. Surely the architect of the Brexit Leave victory knows -you don’t remain if it goes against the Will of The People.

Maybe soon his boss will tell him it’s time to Take Back The Dole. Although I’m not sure you qualify for Universal Credit when you’ve been universally discredited.