During my schooldays in Calcutta, I remember being much taken with a joke about John F Kennedy, US president then, and Nikita Khrushchev, Russian Premier then. The two had played a round of golf together, the story went, and Kennedy had soundly thrashed Khrushchev. The Russian media machine could obviously not honestly report that their great leader had lost a silly game to an American.

The headlines went: Khrushchev placed second, Kennedy came next to last.