I wasn’t able to watch Xarabank on Friday and it seems I missed quite a show which I plan to make up for this morning, catching up with it through TVM’s on-demand menu. But I did watch one clip of the Minister for the Economy cracking what he clearly thought was a joke and which others very strangely thought was fact, after receiving 1,001 messages about it.

Pressed by Joe Azzopardi to say who is carrying out the international audit of Konrad Mizzi’s financial affairs, Chris Cardona – who couldn’t answer for the simple reason that the audit is fictitious and so there can be no auditor – half-laughed and said, “Mhux it-tifel ta’ Daphne Caruana Galizia?” (Son of Godzilla, who like his mother doesn’t have a name).

To say that, of course, Cardona had to go off-message, break ranks and actually pronounce my name. It was such an unusual exercise that it stuck halfway through. But luckily for him, Saviour Balzan was not there to chew his head off while turning apoplectic with rage and foaming at the mouth. That was another star performance, or so I am informed, on TVM earlier in the week, though I didn’t watch it myself and have to rely on hearsay. Sitting next to Cardona, AD’s Michael Briguglio heaved with laughter at the Economy Minister’s repartee, signalling that it was a joke, while the crowd booed and hurled insults at him for trying to evade the question with a stupid remark like that.

But unbelievably (and this is why I am never surprised that so many people in Malta vote Labour and so many others get scammed out of their money by obvious pyramid schemes and false ‘financial advisers’) several people took him literally and asked me, “Is it true?” I must confess that I was short to the point of rudeness in my responses, but at times like that, my patience wears thin. Aside from the fact that the context made it perfectly obvious – to a normal mind – that it was Cardona’s idea of a very amusing sarcastic joke – let’s examine the situation objectively.

None of my sons is an auditor, accountant or financial services specialist. This is a matter of public record and even if it were not, it is quite easily checked. I am very public about my age – 51 – so simple arithmetic makes it obvious that I cannot possibly have a son old enough or with sufficient experience to be commissioned for a forensic audit of that nature, even if I did have one who is a forensic accountant (which I don’t).

It is also public knowledge that none of my sons lives in Malta and that none of them has done so for several years now. But the most commonsense explanation of all is the most obvious: the Labour Party hates my guts. It hates the guts of anyone that has anything to do with me. It has insulted, victimised and persecuted me and my sons through official and unofficial channels, and through its fellow-travellers, for years. So what is the likelihood that, when casting around for a forensic audit of the shady dealings of one of its ministers, the government would pick one of them to do it, if one of them were a forensic accountant?  The likelihood is nought, more so because the shady dealings to be supposedly investigated were revealed by the mother, which would be a manifest conflict of interest even if all other things were equal.

I often wonder how some people’s brains work. I mean, honestly, do they envisage this scenario?

Prime Minister to corrupt chief of staff: “We need a pretend forensic audit of Konrad Mizzi’s operations in Panama and New Zealand, to keep the people happy. Obviously, we know that you can’t have an audit, let alone a forensic one, of a company in Panama and a trust in New Zealand, but people don’t know that. So it has to be a fictitious forensic audit, by some pro-Labour liar who is prepared to cooperate with us.”

Prime Minister’s corrupt chief of staff to Prime Minister: “I know. I have such a cunning plan. We’ll get the Hate Blokker’s son to do it. He’s bound to cooperate with us and pretend that it’s perfectly possible to forensically audit a company in Panama and a trust in New Zealand, and he’ll be gagging to help Konrad Mizzi get out of this mess which his mother created for us.”

Forgive me, but there are moments when the only possible response to people’s stupid questions is “Please pass me that blade. I think I’d quite like to slit my wrists right now.” And I must confess to having given that very response to a couple of them yesterday. As the popular idiom goes, “X’ma jitlax il-Labour?” Chris Cardona is not fit for purpose as the Minister of the Economy, but then so many people aren’t fit for much of a purpose either, which is exactly why people like Cardona end up with a seat in parliament and another one in the cabinet of government. Those who were born with a brain, however small, should start thinking about using it for its proper purpose. And that includes the Minister for the Economy.