AS a practising insomniac, my trick is to leave the World Service on all night on my bedside radio. The rationale is that if it’s boring, I’ll likely drop off – and if it’s riveting, it’ll be worth being awake!

Overnight Thursday to Friday brought a new phenomenon. I was rudely awakened by what sounded like the Rev IM Jolly but turned out to be former president Donald Trump trying to sound mournfully restrained.

It didn’t last long, of course. By the end of a rambling 90-minute “acceptance” speech, he was back on more familiar form; berating Democrats, migrants and “meaningless green scams” of which more in a moment.

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But first, time to wonder at his rapid transformation from martyred victim to full-blown magician. A man who would magic away inflation and stem “invasion” with a side order of world peace. All to be achieved the very instant America voted him back into the White House. It’s going to be a busy old day one if he wins.

(But a day which will not start till after he’s binged on Fox News and muesli-free breakfasts.) Apparently, no wars would have been waged if only he’d been left in charge. No cars would have been imported, especially the electric variety. “Hundreds of thousands” of workers wouldn’t have lost their jobs to “illegal aliens”. And, natch, that border wall would have been finished. You remember, the one Mexico didn’t pay for.

None of which was offered up with evidence attached. Come on, this is The Donald. He doesn’t want to muddy the message with actual facts. Think Boris with longer ties.

Meanwhile, as America very much DOES do God, there were numerous references to the Almighty having saved Trump for the nation. Arranged for him to turn his head away from the bullet which grazed his ear. Was on Trump’s side while being at it forbye. Evangelicals rule OK.

Especially all those God-fearing folks who sent money to help him pay many lawyers/fight elections/settle his unpaid tax bills. Delete as appropriate.

And, because a waitress in Nevada had his ear – before the bullet, obvs – his new big idea is to stop taxing tips. Out of the mouths of babes, sucklings, former presidents and serving staff emits all manner of wisdom.

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However, the most chilling part of his tirade – and that bar was not low – was when he extolled the virtues of US oil wealth. He promised to “drill, baby, drill”, despite the fact that even so-called oil barons have grasped that if there is to be a future for energy, it will be renewables led.

Trump, after all, is the man who visited the devastating fires in California and promptly blamed the West Coast authorities for not adequately clearing the arboreal debris. He seems immune to the burgeoning evidence that drilling, baby, drilling has brought the world to the brink of man-made disaster. That glaciers are melting, the sea is warming, the natural world is dying and we’ve stopped calling serial floods and fires “unprecedented” on the grounds that they’re happening every year.

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, we’ve put non-violent protesters in the pokey for the mortal sin of inconveniencing motorists on the M25 when they tried to draw attention to the fact that the world is hurtling hellwards in a handcart since that mode of transport is handily LEZ compliant.

That former president Trump is colossally ill-informed is hardly a news flash, but he has an undoubted talent for rousing an available rabble, in this instance a Republican Convention delighted to entertain any passing conspiracy theory.

It was clear to them, and to the Dear Leader, that all the court cases trying to make Trump accountable were down to President Biden “weaponising” the Justice Department. Nothing more than legal witch hunts, giving poor wee Donny an undeserved hard time these many years.

It was clear to them, as the Dear Leader had taught, that the 2020 election had been stolen, and that those storming Congress three years ago had merely been trying to right an obvious wrong. The fact that all such allegations of electoral cheating had been treated with the legal disdain they so richly deserved in court after court should not be allowed to interfere with the version of events so carefully crafted at the court of King Trump.

Sure, it was inconvenient that the Dear Leader had been recorded asking the governor of one state to “find” enough votes to let him win. But a very minor detail.

Sure, it was unfortunate that one court found his defence of molesting a porn star wholly implausible, but who in their right mind would believe a purveyor of adult movies over the newly crowned Messiah.

Just how biased the courts had become was surely clear when one judge last week threw out the charges that the Dear Leader had kept classified documents in his cludgie at Mar-a-Lago.

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Apparently, it had not been “constitutional” to appoint an independent prosecutor even though he had that role as a direct result of Trump-inspired attacks on the Department of Justice.

The judge in question was a Trump appointee. Entirely coincidentally.

So whither now this extraordinary contest which makes the British election seem positively pallid by comparison? Even BJ in his pomp could not hope to upstage the ever-more flamboyant DJT. Though Boris did dash out to the convention, allegedly to convince the former president that Ukraine was important, but if a bit of ring kissing was going on too, what the hell.

I do hope, by the way, that our ex premier but two didn’t have to share a private jet with that nice Mr Farage who selflessly stood for election in Clacton thus delaying his walk-on part in Trump’s triumph. Bad news, Nige. You weren’t missed.

There are, however, portions of what’s left of the Conservative Party who are still in mourning for the bold Boris, and still convincing themselves that all would be well if only they would come to their senses and offer Farage a regency.

Liz Truss, for instance, also scurried to Minnesota to bask in the reflected glory; so much better a look than losing to a supermarket lettuce.

And Jacob Rees-Mogg, his electorate having given him the elbow, announced that he was not staying at home to spend more time with his money but would, instead, star in a reality TV show. Plus ca change and all that.

He said in his customary self-deprecating fashion (eh?) that it would be more Fawlty Towers than Downton. Last time I looked, the former didn’t feature a nanny and a sextet of heirs, but it did star a genuinely comic character as opposed to an accidental clown.

How Sir Jacob, a legendary lover of pageantry and tradition, must have loved the State Opening of the Westminster Parliament even if many of the rest of us were left wondering if there was anything left over from the raid on the dressing-up box.

Even the audience had dusted down the red cloak and ermine, available to hire for the day happily. Rather more imposing, we are supposed to believe, than Hulk Hogan tearing open his shirt in Minnesota as he backed Trump. As they say, each to their own.

Back at the state opening, they gave a hat and a stick their very own carriage, proving that those tourists, allegedly lured to London by the thought of glimpsing the monarch, are equally content to stand four deep as the hat is passing. A bit like the Troon Open, really.

In short, the Republicans make a mockery of religion while at Westminster, the Brits are content with sending themselves up.

If she’s up there, Gawd help us all.