Or the second season beginning with the mysterious death of former agent Dickie Bow? More recently, season 3 impressed only minutes in with a James Bond-esque chase through the streets of Istanbul.

Dermot is now planning to swim 100km during the month of November – wearing nothing but a dickie bow – to raise funds for the Mater Foundation.

In the opening chapter of Herron’s funny, clever sequel to 2010’s Slow Horses (2010), low-level British spy, Dickie Bow, dies on a bus to Oxford of apparently natural causes. To Jackson Lamb ...