Perhaps Ronald Arculli was being a little unfair on Robin Cook.
If the shadow foreign secretary hadn't been sitting there in person, he said, he might have been fooled into thinking it was Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind instead.
You had the distinct feeling he wasn't talking about their Scottish accents.
(That would have been even more unfair. The accents are different. You would never catch Mr Rifkind talking about China's place in the 'woreld'.) No, the target of Mr Arculli's scorn was clearly the content, not the form. An awful lot of what Mr Cook had to say did sound uncannily familiar.
Familiar, yes. But identical? Surely, Ron, a man of your experience could hear the little nuances of difference? Like the promise of unconditional right of abode for Hong Kong's stateless minorities.
Like the bald assertion that, yes, the provisional legislature was impossible to reconcile with the Joint Declaration.
Like the dry, witty delivery, unpunctuated by silly, nervous laughter.