Muammar Gaddafi’s recent sanctimonious visit to Rome – where, as is his relish, surrounded by an audience running into hundreds of “paid” selected members of the fair sex this time to outline to them (and indeed the EU) the best route leading to heavenly bliss – is yet another incursion by the colonel into foreign territory, an incongruous space which does not fit him at all.

The right place for him to stick to, which indeed accommodates him perfectly, is his portable boudoir tent, guarded and protected by female members of the armed forces, where as an undisturbed recluse he could hatch and develop his schemes to his heart’s content. The vernacular saying that with money the building of a roadway in the sea can be effected should not be construed as meaning that loads of it can convert and change established refined intellects to alien unethical perceptions.