Well, there’s something we didn’t know, and thank you Australian Story, vanity hagiographers by appointment to Alexander Downer, for drawing it to our attention. 

We didn’t know it when young Georgina Downer slipped like a nepotist in the night to join the family firm as a Foreign Affairs graduate trainee — a feat she managed despite a modest third-class honours degree that might normally have disqualified the majority of applicants. And never mind that only 39 of her fellow applicants out of 1695 managed to crack a job with DFAT. We didn’t realise that not only was she going to work at Daddy’s department, just as Daddy and Daddy’s Daddy had done, but that she would also be sharing digs with Daddy in his Canberra unit, bringing new meaning to the notion of ”arm’s length”.

Have these people no concept of what is even remotely seemly? And Alexander wonders why people find him hard to take. ”People have said the most shocking things,” he says. Of course they have, Alex, of course they have.

Crikey will not publish tomorrow, Anzac Day. We’ll be back in your inbox for Thursday lunchtime.