Undercover journalist Mazher Mahmood, otherwise known as the Fake Sheikh, has been accused of dodgy dealing in luring the innocent to commit ‘crimes’ which he has then exposed to the press. The Athenians knew all about his sort.

They called such people sukophantai (pl.), our ‘sycophants’, though the derivation of the word remains obscure, and it is not clear how it came to mean ‘toady’ in English.