Andrea Leadsom would be the final piece of the crackpot puzzle that is Britain today

Not since the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has any fictional caricature so expertly put the chill into children.

Andrea Leadsom, whose fanciful CV deepens the suspicion that she is a comic grotesque created to satirise residual Tory nastiness, managed this not just metaphorically, but literally and phonetically as well.

“She possibly has nieces, nephews, you know, lots of people,” Leadsom told The Times of Theresa May in that interview of instant legend. “But I have CHILL-dren …”

With that one overstressed syllable, Leadsom sent a glacial frisson of terror into the hearts of children of all ages. It told us one of two things about the woman who may soon be moving her three kids into Downing Street.

Either she is an amateurish buffoon of a rare order. If she could not conceive how completely that “CHILL-dren” would deride her assertion that comparing her fertility with Theresa May’s would be “really, really horrible”, she must be, at best, a quarter wit.

Or she is a vicious operator who did foresee the impact of her CHILL, and calculated the ensuing outrage as a bargain price for smearing May as a barren old maid in the eyes of retrograde Tory members who regard giving birth as the highest imaginable expression of womanhood.

At this early stage, with Leadsom still a largely obscure quantity, it’s 10-11 the pair and take your pick. But either way, be fearful. Whether Leadsom is a dummy or a horror, Iain Duncan Smith’s fervent support for her is a handy reminder of the Tory habit of overlooking a popular pragmatic centrist (Ken Clarke in IDS’ case) in favour of a timewarp zealot.

In a sane country, Leadsom’s reaction to this Times interview would disqualify her on its own. You may recall Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me, in which the basso profundo rapper categorically denies infidelity when his girlfriend catches him in the act with a neighbour.

“But she caught me on the counter (It wasn't me)...

Saw me bangin' on the sofa (It wasn't me)...

She even caught me on camera (It wasn't me).”

After Leadsom was even caught on audio, the rebuttal of reality which is so charming in a novelty rap hit seems less so from a putative prime minister. Objective truth has been out of fashion with the American right for about ten years. People say it takes a decade for a US trend to complete its journey across the Atlantic.

Of course, this is not by any means a sane country at the minute. The referendum unleashed deranged forces which the naive presumed dead, rather than dormant. Swathes of the country are impersonating Alan Bennett’s senile Mam in his Talking Heads monologue A Chip In The Sugar, who recalls repeatedly being told that it’s wrong to be racist, but can’t for the life of her remember why.

On the other side of the political spectrum, where the Mexican stand-off between Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Eagle is nearing its conclusion, Corbyn’s almost guaranteed re-election will surely implode the parliamentary Labour Party.

Meanwhile, a Tory faithful with a habit of going for the underdog may be poised to embrace a candidate who not merely disapproves of gay marriage, but has reportedly praised a Ugandan outfit which strives to “cure” gayness (a little something for Angela Eagle to work with at PMQs there, if she does oust Corbyn). A devoutly religious candidate who hints at taking direct instruction from the Creator (and didn’t that work out spiffingly for Bush and Blair in Iraq?); a candidate who says “I am not a feminist because I am not anti-men”.

If the above cites Leadsom as the Margot Leadbetter candidate from 1975, small wonder. This is a country in the grip of its first full scale national nervous breakdown since the mid-1970s, when relentless industrial strife was perceived to be making Britain ungovernable.

The healer selected to deal with that episode was a certain Margaret Hilda Thatcher, who strode into the national psychiatric ward much like Nurse Ratched arriving for work in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and ordered the mandatory electro convulsive therapy of monetarism. Whether the cure justified the brutality of the treatment remains the source of argument to this day.

Now behold Andrea Leadsom, whom her campaign manager Tim Houghton identifies as “Thatcher Plus”. This snivelling little drip, who could tease the playground bully out of a Zen monk, is best known for a mesmerisingly humiliating attempt at rapping in a telly reality show which sent MPs to live for a few days in a tower block.

This self-styled Shaggy spent Sunday morning performing his version of "It Wasn’t Her" in TV studios, peddling the line that Leadsom meant “nuffink” more than she is proud of her offspring when she stressed that chilling gynaecological contrast with her rival. Houghton’s other claim to fame is his questioning of Sarah Teather’s ministerial competence on the sole grounds of her childlessness. Make of that uncanny coincidence what you will.

Whether Leadsom is really, really horrible or really, really thick, she might, within two months, put the icing on the doolally cake by posing outside No 10 with the fruits of her splendid womb. Even by the mortifying standards of these times, this constitutes an acute emergency.

You need neither be a Tory nor a fan of the Home Secretary to find yourself waking at 3.30 am, in a muck sweat and screaming “May Day, May Day …”