Do we detect some unexpected byproducts of Brexit? Obiter refers to the effect triggering Article 50 has had on our humour, on display last week at an august panel discussion held at City firm HFW.

Brexit had put the chair, HFW’s Brian Perrott, in expansive mood. ‘We have an Oscar-style panel, dripping with talent,’ he said, before revealing something of a professional crush on speaker one, the appeal court’s Dame Elizabeth Gloster. One of her Commercial Court judgments had made Dame Elizabeth his very own ‘queen of freight deliverables’, the shipping and commodities specialist said.

Economist Dr Peter Warburton is taking comfort in idiom. ‘With due respect for James Dyson, Brexit is not happening in a vacuum,’ he opened. Central banks are ‘taking away the punch bowl’ as they end quantitative easing. Ex-diplomat Sir Peter Westmacott really showed how to mix the metaphors, referring to general amusement that on Brexit, ‘cake-ism is alive and kicking’.

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