God knows how Rishi Sunak feels on mornings when he’s not eaten for 16 hours and there’s still over half a 36-hour fast to go. Better than I did, presumably. But I’m not sure. It was probably around that time on a Monday – when, as I understand it, his body would have entered the longed-for fat-burning stage – that Sunak exhumed the disgraced David Cameron and called that abomination a triumph.

What day was it, I now wonder, that Sunak agreed to release a Home Alone-style Christmas video of him frolicking boyishly in Downing Street? Ah. It was “posted on social media at teatime on Monday”.

Most weeks, we have learned, the prime minister stops eating on Sundays at 5pm and doesn’t resume until a day and a half later: 5am on Tuesday.

The source who disclosed to the Sunday Times Sunak’s attachment to a system known to obsessives as a “monk fast” called it “a real testament to the discipline, focus and determination that he shows in all aspects of his life and work”. Confirming how much has changed since 2009, when a similarly disciplined approach was endorsed by Kate Moss: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” She was denounced for encouraging eating disorders and took a decade to live it down.

Now that intermittent fasting has been normalised – thanks not least to that enterprising advice industry, Dr Michael Mosley – news of Sunak’s regime was well enough received for him to elaborate last week. The 36-hour........

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