Sketch: In a world first, Boris Johnson has been the victim of a prank, and thinks it's the pranksters that look stupid

The Foreign Office attempts to re-spin having been taken in by Russian pranksters are more shameless than anything the Kremlin would dare

The point of the Russian state information war, the reason it floods comments sections of popular news articles, or posts replies to viral tweets where their millions of readers are likely to see them, is to do no more than plant the seed of doubt.

The moment at which a member of the British public is asking themselves, for example, actually, hang on, why did the British security services put down Sergei Skripal’s dying radioactive cat, what have they got to hide? This is the moment at which the war has succeeded.

All it seeks to do is make the public stop and think yes, maybe we’re the bad guys.

And so effective at this are they, it is arguable that Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan does not have to assist by doing their job for them.

When the Foreign Secretary takes an eighteen minute phone call with two well known Russian pranksters pretending to be the President of Armenia, the conventional wisdom might proceed along the line of some Russian pranksters having succeeded in making the Foreign Secretary having looked rather silly.

But no. In what may be a world first, according to Mr Duncan, who, having first been taken in by said pranksters, arranged the call himself, it is not the victims of the prank, but the perpetrators who have ended up looking stupid.

“If this was an attempt to ridicule us, it has totally backfired,” Mr Duncan told Bloomberg News, shortly after the fully eighteen minute recording of the conversation was made public. “All it has done is make the Russians look even sillier than we knew they were.”

This is, to be frank, the sort of transparently radioactive spin that only the Kremlin and its various propaganda arms dare try.

What a fun day it must be to spend April Fools Day with Sir Alan Duncan, who has instantly emerged as perhaps the nation’s leading prank victim denialist.

“If super-glueing this 1p piece to the pavement then hiding behind a wheelie bin and watching me for twenty minutes in my struggle to prise it free was an attempt to ridicule me, it has totally backfired,” Mr Duncan might say. “All it has done is make you look even sillier than I already knew you were.”

“If stretching this cling-film over the toilet bowl so I accidentally cover myself in my own wee was an attempt to ridicule me, it has totally backfired,” he might say, towelling down his sodden thighs. “All it has done is make you look even sillier than I already knew you were.”

“If suspending that mento on a piece of string inside the lid of my Diet Coke so that when I open it it drops in and erupts in my face like a volcano was an attempt to ridicule me, it has totally backfired,” he would add, wiping a full litre of fizzy drink from his hair and eyes. “All it has done is make you look even sillier than I already knew you were.”

Somehow, the Conservative spin machine has already convinced a fair chunk of its media pals that, yes, it is Russia not Boris Johnson that has come out of this entirely successful prank looking stupid, which is of course a whole order of magnitude more stupid than the prank itself.

Mr Johnson is being praised for managing not to give away any state secrets or say anything horrendously embarrassing during his eighteen minute chat with these Russian pranksters who are understood to be, to a certain extent, linked to actual Russian security services. That Mr Johnson cannot go ten seconds in the full glare of the public spotlight without succumbing to the overwhelming temptation to say something controversial, yet a full eighteen minutes in private poses no problem tells you yet more about Mr Johnson than you probably already know.

Could it really be that, maybe, we’re the bad guys?