Spanking is back in the news. Le vice anglais was meant to be a dying art — a vestige of a time when men were more repressed, but it’s recently become clear that British men enjoy a thrashing just as much as they ever did.

In the past few weeks a London barrister, Robert Jones, has claimed he was unfairly dismissed after a consensual spanking session with a junior worker, while up north a ‘dungeon master’ called Shaun O’Driscoll, who has thrashed diplomats and a duke, gave evidence at Bolton Crown Court.