The Italian ambassador I mentioned previously has replied to my email:

Not in my empire, but I will enquire and come back to you. It seems tailor made for you.!

I hope he’s not just being diplomatic. (Actually I know him well enough that he would tell me if he thought it was a stupid idea.) Anyway, we’ll see what transpires.

I gave an impromptu talk on Tuesday at the Committee of the Regions (one of the more obscure bits of the EU). I did it in my usual style – drafted out a few talking points on a sheet of paper while the two previous speakers were speaking, and then attempted to deliver as well as I could. I was slightly distracted by the fact that the speaker immediately before me came pretty close to lying by omission about one of the countries I deal with. I decided to say that I regretted that the Commission representative had left out a few important facts, and that members of the Committee might therefore be misled unless I corrected them. Two people came up to me separately afterwards and said it was the best speech they had heard all afternoon, and one asked me for my script. (Which is why I got all excited when I heard from that she had seen me on TV yesterday, and hoped that my words of wisdom might have been preserved forever on film; but it seems that she saw an old interview being rebroadcast.)