A strange and grizzly opening to the new series of Horizon saw Michael Portillo examining both methods of execution down the ages, and his own personal position on the death penalty. Indeed that’s where we start, with Michael admitting that he had initially voted in favour of state executions. Then he’d worked out that we could never be certain we were killing the right person, and voted against on his second chance. I don’t know what was more surprising. That he’d taken so long to realise the obvious, or that a politician had reached the right conclusion in the end.

With his obligatory nod to his previous life at the heart of political cut and thrust out of the way, we were off on a roller-coaster journey through all the ways the human race has traditionally meted out the ultimate sanction, after which we were taken on a magical mystery tour looking for the ultimate in humane killing. A contradiction in terms, surely, as the most humane way to do it would be: not to do it.

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