To mark last week’s chief nursing officer’s conference, Today programme attack dog John Humphrys was set on chief nursing officer Christine Beasley and Unison head of nursing Gail Adams to thrash out whether nurses really need degrees.

This was followed by sport, in which there was a discussion on whether racehorses can be considered intelligent (it was a slow day), but Humphrys wasn’t finished yet. “My editor’s just asked me,” he interjected, “should they be educated to degree level too?”