During the eighties, a number of major museums, including the Modern, had expanded, hoping to cash in on a boom in museumgoing.

Yes, but, says one, it is muscle and everlasting grit and sticktoitiveness that makes the farm go. The sticktoitiveness is all right but an abnormal muscle is not altogether necessary.

besequined, befeathered, beclawed, bewebbed, betasseled, beloved

It’s the kind of scenario Peter Sellers might have dreamt up while brushing his teeth, and some of the comic set-pieces – including Nobby’s seduction of a fabulously overweight maid (Gabourey Sidibe) at a luxurious South African hotel – allow Baron Cohen to indulge his Sellersian fantasies to a previously unprecedented degree.