POLITICIANS who are ‘characters’ should be avoided like the parliamentary plague – but sometimes their idiocy is hard to resist. That brings us back to Brexit-bonkers Tory MP Mark Francois, the biggest twerp in the twerp pile.

Perhaps no journalist, columnist or blogger should ever write about the annoying man: if our fingers stayed away from the ‘M’ and the ‘P’ on our keyboards, would Francois just disappear back to well-padded obscurity?

This is a serious question, as two leading ‘characters’ in this saga are Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, and in both cases the characterful veneer is a put-up job that acts as a disguise. We think they are ‘characters’ and that allows them to get away with just about anything.

Anyway, let’s turn with a tug of reluctance to what Mark Francois said yesterday in the Commons yesterday, after Labour MP Yvette Cooper’s Bill to force Mrs Maybe to seek a delay to Brexit rather than crashing out a week tomorrow was passed on a majority of one vote (313 to 312).

This was enough to set Francois off on one of his tirades. With shuddersome recall you may summon up the time Francois accused the boss of Airbus of “German bullying” – saying with splenetic lack of splendour: “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son.”

Just the other day, Francois laid into Chancellor Philip Hammond during a live radio debate. The member of the European Research Group (which isn’t European and does no research, preferring to agitate on its troublesome arse) said: “If you’re listening Mr Hammond, my fraternal message to you is: ‘Up yours’.”

When he isn’t spluttering out old headlines from the Sun newspaper, Francois likes to call on his military background, infamously saying: “I was in the army, I wasn’t trained to lose.” Not exactly true: he was an infantry officer in the TA.

Then this yesterday after Cooper’s Bill passed: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Factual pointer: he isn’t Jesus on the cross as his persecutors cast lots for his garments. He’s a short rotund Tory with a pomp-pumped mouth.

But if by some slip in the space-time continuum he really is the Son of God, then we are in even deeper shit than we thought.

Still, my money is on him being an annoying MP over-inflated with  puffy self-importance (other insults are available).

Just the other week Boris Johnson was comparing himself to Moses, so it was only a matter of time before Mark Francois went one further.

And it’s probably too late in the day now, but could we try to navigate the Brexit shitstorm without mentioning the war? It might help.