Won’t someone think of the poor statues!? In a world of horror, poverty and GB News, they’re getting an awfully hard time lately.

In Dublin, guards have been posted around Molly Malone to stop drunk tourists molesting the fictional cockle-girl cast in bronze.

Clearly, it’s not cool to grope inanimate objects without consent, but these offences are nothing new in the great tapestry of human ridiculousness.

Next time you’re leafing through your copy of Erotes by Lucian of Samosata (my favourite moment is after work on Fridays just before the pub) check his account of the famed Aphrodite of Knidos.

This statue was so alluring that it apparently drove onlookers wild with desire.

One Ancient Greek got himself in such a marble-induced sex-tizzy that he crept into the temple after dark and carried out all manner of unseemly acts.

Legend has it, he left a stain upon Aphrodite. Lucian is unclear if he spilled his carry-out in excitement or whether it was down to other, less speakable, matters.

Read more from Neil Mackay

Again, not cool. Indeed so uncool, that the temple pervert was overcome with such shame when discovered by priestesses he duly chucked himself off a nearby cliff.

That’s quite harsh. Sensitivity training would have sufficed.

We humans have an odd relationship with statues. We don’t necessarily see them as the works of art the makers intend, rather we see in them strange reflections of ourselves.

We hate some. I wouldn’t be partial, as an Irishman, to statues of Oliver Cromwell, for instance.

He did a lot of the old war crimes back where I’m from. Britain, though, puts Ollie Wart-Face outside the Commons.

We love others. My wife got so bored with me staring in awe at Shakespeare’s statue in Stratford-Upon-Avon........

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