On last week's BBC Radio 4 panel show Any Questions?, audience members were keen to discuss the climate emergency, but a Tory MP's talking points crumbled faster than a sandcastle in a record-breaking drought.

As is tradition in August, when anyone with stronger opinions is on holiday, columnist Zoe Williams joined the panel, prepped by a friend whose job is to prevent radio guests from saying something stupid. Their briefing covered everything from the Strait of Hormuz and energy prices to bus fare caps, egg prices, racism in the press, the AI bubble, and the exact number of bathrooms in Harry and Meghan's US residence - and whether any UK property even comes close.

Naturally, the audience's questions didn't neatly span the full current affairs buffet. Harry and Meghan did make a comeback, but the real theme was climate - everyone wanted to talk about the climate crisis, and they made it clear. The timing was impeccable: news had just surfaced that El Niño would bring an unprecedentedly wet autumn, which is about as soothing to parched, record-breakingly hot summer earth as a single ice cube on a forest fire. Crops are failing, the land is on fire, and no one has managed to not notice - except, apparently, certain politicians whose responses dissolved on contact with reality.