The Metropolitan Police’s approach to investigating the Downing Street parties has prompted considerable puzzlement. Instead of interrogating the suspects in person, they’ve sent each one a written questionnaire, to be completed and returned within a week.

It does seem a little odd. During a traditional face-to-face grilling at a police station, a suspect may break down under pressure and confess. This outcome seems somewhat less likely if he is filling in a form at his leisure from the comfort of his own living room. Especially if he has a full seven days to arrange a conference call with his fellow suspects so that they can check that all their answers are consistent.

Then again, the questionnaire approach clearly has some advantages. After all, police officers these days are always complaining that they have too much paperwork to do. This new approach solves that problem, by outsourcing all the paperwork to the criminal instead.

Perhaps, if the investigation into the Downing Street parties is deemed a success, questionnaires will in future be used for investigating all types of crime. Burglary, muggings, fraud, terrorist attacks, you name it. Questionnaires could be tailored to fit each different category of offence.

Did you rob this bank? Please tick:

? Yes

? No

If yes, provide evidence below, including names, contact details and fingerprints of all co-conspirators. Please use additional blank pages if necessary.

This would free up a tremendous amount of police time, thus enabling officers to concentrate on the real priorities of 21st-century policing, such as combing through people’s social media posts to see whether they’ve been expressing unfashionable opinions.

On the other hand, the questionnaire approach might not be popular with fans of detective fiction. It would make each case rather samey, and remove a lot of the excitement.

“Why, mon cher Hastings, ze murderer was of course ze scullery maid.”

“The scullery maid? Good heavens, Poirot! That’s incredible. How on earth did you work it out?”

“Simple. On ze questionnaire I gave her, she ticked ‘yes’ under ‘Are you ze murderer?’”

The real problem with partygate

Of course, you might have assumed that, after two and a half months of non-stop coverage, every possible aspect of the “partygate” scandal had already been exhausted. At the weekend, however, a fresh perspective on the story was advanced by one of Britain’s most consistently incisive commentators.

Liam Gallagher.

In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, the former Oasis singer was scathing about the Downing Street parties – but for an unusual reason. “You can imagine Putin sitting there thinking, ‘Call that a party? Abba and a cheeseboard?’” he said in disgust. “We’re a laughing stock.”

In other words, Mr Gallagher was appalled not because the Prime Minister had partied too much – but because he hadn’t partied enough.

Personally, I think he makes a very reasonable point. Judging from the evidence seen so far, these Downing Street parties were barely worthy of the name. Indeed, they appear to have been pitifully drab. Surely if one is going to break the rules one has imposed over the rest of the country, one might as well do it in style. It hardly seems worth risking the demise of one’s political career for a measly glass of plonk in the garden with Matt Hancock, or a slice of Colin the Caterpillar in the Cabinet Room.

What makes it all the more galling is that Boris Johnson is a classicist. He should therefore know perfectly well what a proper party consists of, because he will have studied the ones thrown by the emperors of ancient Rome. Caligula, for example, ordered the construction of three gigantic, jewel-encrusted pleasure ships, on which he would host orgies and drink pearls dissolved in vinegar.

Nero, furthermore, is said to have thrown parties in a golden palace containing exotic animals, prostitutes, a 120-foot-tall bronze statue of himself, and a rotating banquet hall, where guests would feast on such delicacies as stuffed sow’s womb and roast dormouse. Even a rock’n’roll veteran of Mr Gallagher’s standing would have been impressed by that.

Yet the best Mr Johnson can do, it appears, is a Zoom quiz over a bottle of prosecco from Tesco Express. Frankly, it’s pathetic. In my view, the Prime Minister will not regain the respect of the Britpop community until photographs emerge of him in a toga snorting cocaine off a bust of Gladstone.