The tang of aftershave on the wily features 'composed in excruciated compassion' (The Times); 'locked in knowing derision' (The Guardian): 'showing elitist sneerocracy of the media as only it can' (take your pick from the fringe press).
While the media sneerocracy only came round to Oliver because of his pro bono project, the huge number of people buying his books and wheeling their Sainsbury's trolleys in his wake had already responded to his charisma.
Only the Cameroons, paralysed as they are by the fashionable prejudices aired at metropolitan dinner tables and the terror of getting on the wrong side of the BBC sneerocracy.
The sneerocracy consists of certain hacks, cartoonists, TV presenters, comedians, activists and the Twitterati, all of whom make it their lives’ work to sneer at politicians – not merely to criticise them and hold them to account, which we all must do, but to mock them, to call into question their every action, to wonder endlessly about their “real” (that is, sinister) motives.