When I half-jokingly talked about the Russian crop failing last week, I did say ‘next year’; I was a bit taken aback to have the prediction completed within a few days. But with the abnormally hot weather there in the last few weeks, a knackered wheat crop is precisely what they’ve got: and it won’t be something to joke about, either for the Russian poor themselves, or the rest of us.

Already the food industry is talking about rising prices for flour-related products such as bread and biscuits; and as many of these are semi-luxury products (rather than what the retail trade calls KVIs) you can be sure Tesco an Asda will be whacking the price up at every opportunity.

European wheat prices per ton jumped 8% yesterday to €211, the highest in two years… and wheat prices have risen nearly 50 per cent since late June because the US is also being ravaged by heat. Still, we must remember that all this heat and flooding is weather, not climate.

The 2007-08 global food crisis saw food riots in poor countries from Haiti to Bangladesh. In all seriousness, were the Russians to keel over financially at the same time, it would be destabilising for both Moscow and its many neighbours. Russian bear with sore head bad news; hungry Russian bear heap bad news.