Our cat’s preferred brand of catfood has a disarming slogan: ‘As good as it looks’.  The layers of meaning quiver in front of your eyes almost as much as the meaty jelly does when you spoon it out. Obviously, ‘as good as it looks’ is meant to put positive thoughts in your head about the catfood, but it has the ring of accidental truth-telling.

It reminds me of a wonderful remark variously attributed to American author Mark Twain or to his contemporary, humorist Edgar Wilson Nye, about the music of Wagner: ‘Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.’ Like all the best observations, you can savour it for ages without it losing its bite.