Thumbing through the Department of Health response to Francis, End Game was shocked to learn that the government had lost all confidence in the General Medical Council and was proposing to transfer the medical revalidation programme to NHS England.

“We are now at the right point for transferring the programme to NHS England to take forward and lead the continued implementation across England,” it unambiguously stated.

A terrible idea, but not beyond the bounds of plausibility, we thought - it’s not as if the mega-quango doesn’t already have squillions of other unrelated and sometimes contradictory responsibilities.

Good job we double checked, though. It turned out that only the little known “revalidation support team” was being sent to live in Quarry House, and not the entire revalidation programme.

No doubt NHS England, doctors and the GMC were as relieved at the clarification as we were.