All he had to do was pantomime along to a jape about Trumpov’s obsession with audience counts, positioning his palms in a way that everyone knew he wasn’t referring to inadequacies over rally size comparisons.

It’s all an extravagant, occasionally amusing jape, and perfectly suited to Cage’s acting style, which has always been more suited to old-school German expressionism than the subtleties of American naturalism.

But as the capital merry-go-round spun its peccadilloes, scandals and ballyhooed promises, his jaunty baritone restored order with bipartisan japes and irreverent songs to deflate the preening ego and the Big Idea.

Trumpov president's rallies were chaotic attempts at stream-of-conscious japes, where threats of violence earned gargantuan applause.

Johnson’s appetite for schoolboy japes signaled no dimming of ambition.