To understand the bizarre story that follows, you need to know a little about the FCO Grand Staircase.

It is, forsooth, Grand. See this. And this. The high Victorian artwork might not pass today’s fine standards for political correctness. But it too is on a magnificent scale.

The Foreign Secretary’s Office is just above the Staircase on the first floor. Below that is the office of the Permanent Under-Secretary (PUS), the top FCO official.

Back in the day, the wife of the then Minister of State Timothy Renton was near the Staircase, and was unimpressed with some dour metal coat-racks standing near the PUS’s office, no doubt left over from a passing reception. So she mentioned to the PUS that these coat-racks were rather an eyesore amidst the splendour. This prompted the PUS to suggest firmly to his relatively youthful assistant private secretary (APS) that the offending coat-racks be removed.

The insanity begins. The hapless APS does not quite hear what the PUS said. He somehow gets it into his head that the PUS has told him to get rid of the Kojaks. Not coat-racks. A baffling and definitely unexpected order from the lofty PUS, to be sure, but definitely an order. So he departs in search of Kojaks to remove.

(Cultural note: For younger readers unfamiliar with the word Kojak, he was a famous US TV detective known for a sharp tongue, a bald head and lots of lollipops.)

Not surprisingly, our intrepid APS does not immediately find any Kojaks strolling around the FCO Grand Staircase, or even any discarded Kojak lollipops. But he keeps looking. The word of the PUS has to be obeyed!

And lo! he finds at least one Kojak! The rather stocky bald ancient philosopher statue next to a pillar that you can see here. He has no hair. Ergo he must be a Kojak! He has a companion statue on the other side of the Staircase (see here) who does have hair and looks slimmer – literally no resemblance to any conception of Kojak. Still, the two of them are the only thing even remotely linkable to the word Kojak near the Staircase. And the PUS has ordered that these statues be removed, using impressively dismissive if not sneering language in the process.  So they have to go.

Our APS duly sends a brisk memo to the FCO Works department instructing them to get these ugly statues taken away ASAP, on the PUS’s personal instructions.

Consternation deep down in the boiler room!

Why has the PUS taken suddenly and strongly against these frumpy but certainly historic and distinguished Victorian statues? They’ve stood there meekly for decades, quietly minding their own business. What’s to replace them? Quick! Isn’t there some sort of preservation order stopping such vandalism?!

Intense paperwork starts to be generated. Experts and officials of different shapes and sizes pore over the myriad procedural problems the PUS has created. Things drag on inconclusively.

Finally a delegation of FCO officials asks for a meeting with the PUS to remonstrate with him. All sorts of learned papers are assembled to make the overwhelming case that intrinsic parts of the FCO historic fabric in such a prominent location can not be demolished on what, ahem, with respect, looks like a private PUS preoccupation with the Minister’s wife’s passing wishes.

The ghastly truth emerges. The bewildered PUS explains that not even in his wildest dreams would he (a) demand that these fine statues be removed, and (b) do so by rudely calling them ‘Kojaks’. Did anyone seriously think that that was what he wanted, or said? Has the APS and everyone else round here lost whatever tiny minds they might have been thought to possess?

Things return to normal.

There are no ugly metal coat-racks.

The statues are still there, pondering human folly.

So much of it to go round.

+ + + NewsFlash + + +

In the context of human and inhuman folly, here’s Sir J Kerr, a former PUS and serial Europhiliac, rather over-egging the rhetorical pudding on Brexit. As the Daily Mail notes, not altogether inaccurately:

John Kerr is the authentic, drawling voice of the European elite. Whitehall insider, British ambassador, Shell deputy chairman, peer of the realm – he has been these and more, outwardly droll, bookishly pleased with himself. Kerr is clever and courtly in his ways. But with his tobaccoey timbre he is zealotry cloaked in velvet.

My own contact with John Kerr was limited. But when in 1999 I returned from Bosnia to get a huge promotion under Robin Cook’s instructions to be appointed FCO Deputy Political Director, he summoned me to his office:

“Now, young Crawford, you’ve done a lot of fancy footwork out on the wing in the Balkans. We need you to play a very different midfield game now!”

I meekly agreed. Instead I should have pushed back:

“Fine, PUS. I live to serve. But doesn’t it really depend how many goals you want scored?”