This has been the summer of our discontent; bad news stories have followed each other across the headlines. Is the world going to the dogs, or are things pretty much as they always were, a mixture of the dramatic and the mundane?

Whilst we are waiting for an answer to fundamental questions, perhaps humour is the best medicine.

A man walked into a pub with a pig on a lead. The barman said “Does he grunt when you stroke him?” The pig replied, “Yes, he does.”

Max Nottingham, St Faith’s Street, Lincoln