Such a shame Southampton proved not so smart

It’s that time of year when the latest batch of sports tomes stack up like Jurgen Klopp celebratory memes on a Twitter feed so it’s unlikely that Michelle Obama’s latest literary offering, Becoming, will be afforded much time here. What has caught our eye, though, was the former First Lady’s appearance in London this week, writes Brendan O'Brien.

Speaking at the Southbank Centre to a crowd of about 3,000 people, Mrs Obama confirmed what pretty much all of us knew or, at the very least, suspected for a long, long time: that the world’s emperors stand more or less naked as a colony of nudists in high summer. “Here’s the secret: they’re not that smart,” she explained of the globe’s political elite.