THE current Westminster handwringing over who touched/chatted up/propositioned/leered at whom, when, where and why, is somewhat under-impressing Quentin Letts.

“The whole thing is being over blown,” said the Daily Mail political sketch writer.

“The other day the House (of Commons) was in totally pious mood and to be honest I found it difficult to take.

"Not only that but they were doing a great dis-service to all those who have suffered serious sexual abuse.

"So far nothing like that has come out here and hopefully it won’t.

"Touching someone’s knee 30 years ago is hardly a life-changing experience.

"It’s like a sex scandal without the sex.”

It would be a brave politician who touched Letts’ knee.

Not because they would be felled by a high octane karate chop, although I don’t actually know what he does in his spare time.

This former scholar of The Elms School at Colwall may well a 108th Dan for all I know.

But because they might find themselves featured in one of his razor-sharp comment pieces.

Mr Letts, who lives at How Caple, near Ross-on-Wye, has just published his third book, Patronising Bastards (Little, Brown £16.99) and several expensive law firms have probably already taken calls. They won’t get far. Because “character defenestration”, as he calls it, is what this particular Q does for a job.

He likes bringing those who think they know best, “the snooterati with their faux-liberal ways”, to book.

The fifth child of two school-teachers – his father was a Latin master hence the rather flamboyant Christian name (quinque being five to the Romans) – Quentin and his family arrived in the village of How Caple, Herefordshire in 2002 when his son also enrolled at The Elms School, Colwall.

Quentin was there from 1971-76, but because his family at that time lived near Stroud, he boarded.

His scholastic career eventually took him on to Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited the college’s satirical magazine The Piranha, as well as gaining a degree in medieval and renaissance literature, and then to Jesus College, Cambridge where he gained a diploma in classical archaeology. So he’s used to digging the dirt.

However Quentin Letts is not the sort of person you’re likely to find in the kitchen at a politicians’ party.

Because as a political sketch writer he is someone the political classes tend to avoid like the proverbial plague.

As he pointed out: “It’s important to make the distinction between a lobby correspondent, who of necessity has to cosy up, to some extent, to politicians to get the latest inside story and a sketch writer like me, who stands on the outside and comments on their character, behaviour, image, things like that. Bare news is not what I do.”

Understandably some politicians take less than a shine to his views of them. John Prescott, the socialist class warrior who happily accepted a place in the House of Lords, can’t stand him and neither, I suspect, can former Commons Speaker Michael Martin, whom Letts christened Gorbals Mick, despite Martin never having lived in the Gorbals slum area of Glasgow in his life.

He’s not a fan of the current Speaker John Bercow either. Only this week the Letts’ column described “Squeaker Bercow” as a little goblin gripped by his own sanctity. Kapow!

While his journalist career, which began in 1987, has included spells covering news – Letts was New York correspondent of The Times in the Nineties – he has usually preferred the gossip of life and former Daily Mail editor Max Hastings appointed him to his current job when he was looking for a column which commented on rather than reported on life in Westminster.

As such Mr Letts has free-ish rein to say it as he sees it.

One of his current favourites is Nick Clegg, former Lib-Dem leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, lest we forget. Which is easily done.

“That Cleggie’s a real piece of work,” he said. “There he is swanning off to Brussels to talk to them about Brexit without any mandate whatsoever.

"I mean he’s not a party leader, he’s not even an MP any more. Who on earth does he think he is?”

In his sketch writer column, Letts described the visit of Clegg, Kenneth Clarke and Lord Adonis to EU HQ as “a sort of freelance diplomatic mission that is not easily distinguished from treachery”.

Patronising Bastards is peppered with such observations.

Theresa May, for example, is described as “so boring they could use her to dig for shale gas”, Lily Allen is “a pop singer who has made plain her dimness” and Sir Alan Sugar is “Lord Sugarlump, runty little property developer, shouty presenter of TV’s The Apprentice and sometime computer salesman”. And so it goes on its glorious way.

When the young Letts would appear somewhat scruffily dressed with his school tie under one ear and his shirt out the back of his trousers, his scholastic father would berate him for looking like “a third-rate American journalist”. The lad’s a bit more than that now. Quite a bit. And I hope that doesn’t make me a patronising b*stard!